h
Comes the hour your words to prove--
Ah! even now begin to love,
Since I now begin to die.

[JUSTINA enters.

* * * * *

SCENE III.

CYPRIAN, MOSCON, CLARIN, and LIVIA.

CLARIN. Livia, while my master yonder,
Like a living skeleton,
Life and motion being gone,
On his luckless love doth ponder,
Give me an embrace.

LIVIA. Stay, stay.
Patience, man! until I see,
For I like my conscience free,
If to-day is your right day.--
Tuesday, yes, and Wednesday, no.

CLARIN. What are you counting there? Awake!
Moscon's mum.

LIVIA. He might mistake,
And I wish not to act so.
For, desiring to pursue
A just course betwixt you both,
Turn about, I would be loth
Not to give you each his due.
But I see that you are right,
'Tis your day.

CLARIN. Embrace me, then.

LIVIA. Yes, again, and yet again.

MOSCON. Hark to me, my lady bright,
May I from your ardour borrow
A good omen in my case;
And as Clarin you embrace,
Moscon you'll embrace to-morrow!

LIVIA. Your suspicion is, in fact,
Quite absurd; on me rely.
Jupiter forbid that I
Should commit so bad an act
As to be cool in any way
To a friend. I will to thee
Give an embrace in equity,
When it is your worship's day.
[Exit.

* * * * *

SCENE IV.

CYPRIAN, MOSCON, and CLARIN.

CLARIN. Well, I'll not be by to see,
That's a comfort.

MOSCON. How? why so?
Need I be chagrined to know,
If the girl's not mine, that she
Thus to you her debt did pay.

CLARIN. No.

MOSCON. This makes my point more strong,
Since to me it were no wrong
If it chanced not on my day.
But our master yonder, see,
How absorbed he seems.

CLARIN. More near,
If he speaks I'd like to hear.

MOSCON. And I, too, would like.

CYPRIAN. Ah me!
[As MOSCON and CLARIN approach CYPRIAN from opposite sides, he
gesticulates with his arms, and accidentally strikes both.
Love, how great thy agonies!--

CLARIN. Ah! ah, me!

MOSCON. Ah, me! I bawl.

CLARIN. Well, I think that we may call
This the land of the 'sigh-ah-mes'!

CYPRIAN.