the King,
With all your service; onely, if I send,
Respect me as your friend, and love my Clermont.

_Bal._ Your Highnesse knowes my vowes.

_Gui._ I, tis enough. 130
_Exit Guise. Manet Bal[igny]._

[Sidenote: +Amechanon de pantos+, &c.

_Impossible est viri cognoscere mentem ac voluntatem, priusquam in
Magistratibus apparet._

Sopho. _Antig._]

_Bal._ Thus must wee play on both sides, and thus harten
In any ill those men whose good wee hate.
Kings may doe what they list, and for Kings, subjects,
Eyther exempt from censure or exception;
For, as no mans worth can be justly judg'd 135
But when he shines in some authoritie,
So no authoritie should suffer censure
But by a man of more authoritie.
Great vessels into lesse are emptied never,
There's a redoundance past their continent ever. 140
These _virtuosi_ are the poorest creatures;
For looke how spinners weave out of themselves
Webs, whose strange matter none before can see;
So these, out of an unseene good in vertue,
Make arguments of right and comfort in her, 145
That clothe them like the poore web of a spinner.

_Enter Clermont._

_Clermont._ Now, to my challenge. What's the place, the weapon?

_Bal._ Soft, sir! let first your challenge be received.
Hee would not touch, nor see it.

_Cler._ Possible!
How did you then?

_Bal._ Left it, in his despight. 150
But when hee saw mee enter so expectlesse,
To heare his base exclaimes of "murther, murther,"
Made mee thinke noblesse lost, in him quicke buried.

[Sidenote: _Quo mollius degunt, eo servilius._

Epict.]

_Cler._ They are the breathing sepulchres of noblesse:
No trulier noble men then lions pictures, 155
Hung up for signes, are lions. Who knowes not
That lyons the more soft kept, are more servile?
And looke how lyons close kept, fed by hand,
Lose quite th'innative fire of spirit and greatnesse
That lyons free breathe, forraging for prey, 160
And grow so grosse that mastifes, curs, and mungrils
Have spirit to cow them: so our soft French Nobles
Chain'd up in ease and numbd securitie
(Their spirits shrunke up like their covetous fists,
And never opened bu