Shakspeare's instinct divined the precise moment when the bells of the Fool's bauble could not compete with thunder, nor the balls upon his cap draw off the bolt. But, while the muttering comes up from the horizon and begins to be heard between the lines, the bells still shake, as in the last scene of the first act, where they render more sombre the expectation of what must finally come down upon our heads. The recollection of Cordelia gives the King a lucid interval: it breaks like a breadth of heaven into his brain, and into ours through that little sentence, "I did her wrong." "Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?" "No." "Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house." "Why?" "Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case." Lear listens absently to the quaint chatter; for he detects the threat which has been approaching from the distance, and is now quite near. "Oh, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet Heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad." After helping Kent and Gloster bear off the King just before old Gloster's eyes are plucked from his head, the Fool disappears from the tragedy, as if all light were to be quenched with such an act, and all moods but terror to be stamped with those jellies under Cornwall's feet. "Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. 7. Though I suspect here either a fragment of an early form of the play that kept its place in the stage copy and passed into print unchastened, or some phrases interpolated by actors. Something has been dropped out between Parolles's "Will you do any thing with it?" and Helena's recurrence to Bertram's leaving for the court, "There shall your master have a thousand loves;" so that the scene is in an imperfect condition.] [Footnote 9: Reproduction of _anthropophagi_ as heard from some guest by the host of the Garter Inn, in "Merry Wives of Windsor," iv. 5.] WOMEN AND MEN: MARIA, HELENA, IMOGEN, CONSTANCE. WOMEN AND MEN.