paltry insignificant villain as thou art, or I’ll pick thy carcass for thee. He had no sooner made his _exit_, but cries an odd sort of a spark, with his hat button’d up before, like a country scraper, under favour, Sir, what do you think of me? Why, who are you? reply’d I to him, Who am I, answer’d he, Why _Nero_, the sixth emperor of _Rome_, that murder’d my---- Come, said I to him, to stop your prating, I know your history as well as yourself, that murder’d your mother, kick’d your wife down stairs, dispatch’d two Apostles out of the world, begun the first persecution against the christians, and, lastly, put your master _Seneca_ to death. As for the murder of your mother, I confess it shew’d you had some taste of wickedness, and may pass for a tolerable piece of gallantry; but prithee, what a mighty matter was it to send your wife packing with a good kick in the guts, when once she grew nauseous and sawcy; ’tis no more than what a thousand tinkers and foot-soldiers have done before you: or to put the penal laws in execution against a brace of hot-headed bigots, and their besotted followers, that must needs come and preach up a new religion at _Rome_: or, in fine, to take away a haughty, ungrateful pedant’s life, who conspir’d to take away your’s; altho’ I know those worthy gentlemen, the school-masters, make a horrid rout about it in their nonsensical declamations? Whereas his most _Christian Majesty_, whose advocate I am resolved to be against all opposers whatever, has bravely and generously starv’d a million of poor _Hugonots_ at home, and sent t’other million of them a grasing into foreign countries, contrary to solemn edicts, and repeated promises, for no other provocation, that I know of, but because they were such coxcombs, as to place him upon the throne. In short, friend _Nero_, thou may’st pass for a rogue of the third or fourth class; but be advised by a stranger, and never shew thyself such a fool as to dispute the pre-eminence with _Lewis le Grand_, who has murder’d more men in his reign, let me tell thee, than thou hast murder’d tunes, for all thou art the vilest thrummer upon cat-gut the sun ever beheld. However, to give the Devil his due, I will say it before thy face, and behind thy back, that if thou had’st reign’d as many years as my gracious master has done, and had’st had, instead of _Tigellinus_, a _Jesuit_ or two to have govern’d thy conscience, thou mightest, in all probability, have made a much more magnificent figure, and been inferior to none but the mighty monarch I have been talking of.