_Herc._ Nay, but most of this is your fault, that for many years, only upon mere mistrust, sever'd your body from your lady, and in that time gave opportunity, turn'd a jealous ass, and hired[251] some to try and tempt your lady's honour, whilst she, with all possible industry of apparent merit, diverting your unfortunate suspicion---- _Zuc._ I know't; I confess, all this I did, and I do glory in't. Why? cannot a young lady for many months keep honest? No, I misthought it. My wife had wit, beauty, health, good birth, fair clothes, and a passing body; a lady of rare discourse, quick eye, sweet language, alluring behaviour, and exquisite entertainment. I misthought it, I fear'd, I doubted, and at the last I found it out. I praise my wit: I knew I was a cuckold. _Herc._ An excellent wit. 355 _Zuc._ True, Fawn; you shall read of some lords that have had such a wit, I can tell you; and I found it out that I was a cuckold! _Herc._ Which now you have found, you will not be such an ass as Cæsar, great Pompey, Lucullus, Anthony, or Cato, and divers other Romans,--cuckolds, who all knew it, and yet were ne'er divorced upon't:--or, like that smith-god, Vulcan, who, having taken his wife taking, yet was presently appeased, and entreated to make an armour for a bastard of hers, Æneas.[252] 365 _Zuc._ No, the Romans were asses, and thought that a woman might mix her thigh with a stranger wantonly, and yet still love her husband matrimonially. _Herc._ As indeed they say a many married men lie sometime with strange women, whom, but for the instant use, they abhor. _Zuc._ And as for Vulcan, 'twas humanity more than human; such excess of goodness, for my part, only belong to the gods. _Herc._ Ass for you! _Zuc._ As for me, my Fawn, I am a bachelor now. _Herc._ But you are a cuckold still, and one that knows himself to be a cuckold. _Zuc._ Right, that's it; and I knew it not, 'twere nothing; and if I had not pursued it too, it had lyen in oblivion, and shadowed in doubt, but now I ha' blazed it. 381 _Herc._ The world shall know what you are. _Zuc._ True; I'll pocket up no horns; but my revenge shall speak in thunder. _Herc._ Indeed, I must confess I know twenty are cuckolds,[253] honestly and decently enough: a worthy gallant spirit (whose virtue suppresseth his mishap) is lamented but not disesteem'd by it; yet the world shall know---- _Zuc._ I am none of those silent coxcombs--it shall out. _Herc._ And although it be no great part of injustice for him to be struck with the scabbard that has struck with the blade (for there is few of us but hath made some one cuckold or other)---- 393 _Zuc._ True, I ha' done't myself. _Herc._ Yet----