_Herc._ Pish, Zoccoli! No, Nymphadoro, if Sir Amoroso would ha' children, let him lie on a mattress, plow or thresh, eat onions, garlic, and leek porridge. Pharaoh and his council were mistaken; and their device to hinder the increase of procreation in the Israelites with enforcing them to much labour of body, and to feed hard, with beets, garlic, and onions (meat that make the original of man most sharp and taking), was absurd. No, he should have given barley bread, lettuce, melons, cucumbers, huge store of veal and fresh beef, blown up their flesh, held them from exercise, rolled them in feathers, and most surely seen them drunk once a day; then would they at their best have begotten but wenches, and in short their generation enfeebled to nothing. 172 _Sir Amor._ O, divine Faunus, where might a man take up forty pound in a commodity of garlic and onions? Nymphadoro, thine ear. _Herc._ Come, what are you fleering at? There's some weakness in your brother you wrinkle at thus; come, prithee, impart; what? we are mutually incorporated, turn'd one into another, brued [sic] together. Come, I believe you are familiar with your sister, and it were known. _Herod._ Witch, Faunus, witch! Why, how dost dream I live? Is't four score a year, think'st thou, maintains my geldings, my pages, foot-cloths, my best feeding, high play, and excellent company? No, 'tis from hence, from hence, I mint some four hundred pound a year. 185 _Herc._ Dost thou live like a porter, by the[172] back, boy? _Herod._ As for my weak-rein'd brother, hang him! He has sore shins. Damn him, heteroclite! his brain's perished! His youth spent his fodder so fast on others' cattle, that he now wants for his own winter. I am fain to supply, Fawn, for which I am supplied. _Herc._ Dost thou branch him, boy? _Herod._ What else, Fawn? 193 _Herc._ What else? Nay, 'tis enough. Why, many men corrupt other men's wives, some their maids, others their neighbours' daughters; but to lie with one's brother's wedlock,[173] O, my dear Herod, 'tis vile[174] and uncommon lust. _Herod._ 'Fore Heaven, I love thee to the heart! Well, I may praise God for my brother's weakness, for I assure thee the land shall descend to me, my little Fawn. 201 _Herc._ To thee, my little Herod? O, my rare rascal, I do find more and more in thee to wonder at, for thou art, indeed--if I prosper, thou shalt know what. Who's this?[175] _Enter_ Don ZUCCONE. _Herod._ What! know you not Don Zuccone, the only desperately railing lord[176] at's lady that ever was confidently melancholy--that egregious idiot, that husband of the most witty, fair (and be it spoken with many men's true grief), most chaste Lady Zoya! But we have entered into a confederacy of afflicting him. 211