p a little: you must get you a
mistress, Rhodophil. That, indeed, is living upon cordials; but, as
fast as one fails, you must supply it with another. You're like a
gamester who has lost his estate; yet, in doing that, you have learned
the advantages of play, and can arrive to live upon't.

_Rho._ Truth is, I have been thinking on't, and have just resolved to
take your counsel; and, faith, considering the damned disadvantages of
a married man, I have provided well enough, for a poor humble sinner,
that is not ambitious of great matters.

_Pala._ What is she, for a woman?

_Rho._ One of the stars of Syracuse, I assure you: Young enough, fair
enough; and, but for one quality, just such a woman as I could wish.

_Pala._ O friend, this is not an age to be critical in beauty. When we
had good store of handsome women, and but few chapmen, you might have
been more curious in your choice; but now the price is enhanced upon
us, and all mankind set up for mistresses, so that poor little
creatures, without beauty, birth, or breeding, but only impudence, go
off at unreasonable rates: And a man, in these hard times, snaps at
them, as he does at broad gold; never examines the weight, but takes
light or heavy, as he can get it.

_Rho._ But my mistress has one fault, that's almost unpardonable; for,
being a town-lady, without any relation to the court, yet she thinks
herself undone if she be not seen there three or four times a day with
the princess Amalthea. And, for the king, she haunts and watches him
so narrowly in a morning, that she prevents even the chemists, who
beset his chamber, to turn their mercury into his gold.

_Pala._ Yet, hitherto, methinks, you are no very unhappy man.

_Rho._ With all this, she's the greatest gossip in nature; for,
besides the court, she's the most eternal visitor of the town; and yet
manages her time so well, that she seems ubiquitary. For my part, I
can compare her to nothing but the sun; for, like him, she takes no
rest, nor ever sets in one place, but to rise in another.

_Pala._ I confess, she had need be handsome, with these qualities.

_Rho._ No lady can be so curious of a new fashion, as she is of a new
French word: she's the very mint of the nation; and as fast as any
bullion comes out of France, coins it immediately into our language.

_Pala._ And her name is--

_Rho._ No naming; that's not like a cavalier: Find her, if you can, by
my description; and I am not so ill a painter t