who knows,
When once your conscience yields, how far 'twill stretch;
Next, quite to dash your firmest hopes in pieces,
The duke of Guise is dead.

_1 Sher._ Dead, colonel!

_2 Sher._ Undone, undone!

_Gril._ The world cannot redeem you;
For what, sirs, if the king, provoked at last,
Should join the Spaniard, and should fire your city;
Paris, your head,--but a most venomous one,--
Which must be blooded?

_1 Sher._ Blooded, colonel!

_Gril._ Ay, blooded, thou most infamous magistrate,
Or you will blood the king, and burn the Louvre;
But ere that be, fall million miscreant souls,
Such earth-born minds as yours; for, mark me, slaves,
Did you not, ages past, consign your lives,
Liberties, fortunes, to Imperial hands,
Made them the guardians of your sickly years?
And now you're grown up to a booby's greatness,
What, would you wrest the sceptre from his hand?
Now, by the majesty of kings I swear,
You shall as soon be saved for packing juries.

_1 Sher._ Why, sir, mayn't citizens be saved?

_Gril._ Yes, sir,
From drowning, to be hanged, burnt, broke o'the wheel.

_1 Sher._ Colonel, you speak us plain.

_Gril._ A plague confound you,
Why should I not? what is there in such rascals,
Should make me hide my thought, or hold my tongue?
Now, in the devil's name, what make you here,
Daubing the inside of the court, like snails,
Sliming our walls, and pricking out your horns?
To hear, I warrant, what the king's a doing,
And what the cabinet-council; then to the city,
To spread your monstrous lies, and sow sedition?
Wild fire choke you!

_1 Sher._ Well, we'll think of this;
And so we take our leaves.

_Gril._ Nay, stay, my masters;
For I'm a thinking now just whereabouts
Grow the two tallest trees in Arden forest.

_1 Sher._ For what, pray, colonel, if we may be so bold?

_Gril._ Why, to hang you upon the highest branches.
'Fore God, it will be so; and I shall laugh
To see you dangling to and fro i'the air,
With the honest crows pecking your traitors' limbs.

_All._ Good colonel!

_Gril._ Good rats, my precious vermin.
You moving dirt, you rank stark muck o'the world,
You oven-bats, you things so far from souls,
Like dogs, you're out of Providence's reach,
And only fit for hanging; but be gone,
And think of plunder.--You right elder sheriff,
Who carved our Henry's image on a table,
At your club-feast, and after stabbed it through,--[11]

_1 Sher._ Mercy, good colonel.

_Gril._ Run with your nose to e