if my heart would let me--
This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go,
But that my doors are baleful to my eyes,
Fill'd and dam'd up with gaping creditors,
Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring.
I've now not fifty ducats in the world,
Yet still I am in love, and pleas'd with ruin.
Oh! Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife--
And we will bear our wayward fate together,
But ne'er know comfort more.

_Enter Pierre._

_Pier._ My friend, good morrow;
How fares the honest partner of my heart?
What, melancholy! not a word to spare me?

_Jaf._ I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damn'd starving quality,
Call'd honesty, got footing in the world.

_Pier._ Why, powerful villany first set it up,
For its own ease and safety. Honest men
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains,
They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice,
Cut-throats rewards: each man would kill his brother
Himself; none would be paid or hang'd for murder.
Honesty! 'twas a cheat invented first
To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,
That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,
And lord it uncontrol'd above their betters.

_Jaf._ Then honesty is but a notion?

_Pier._ Nothing else;
Like wit, much talk'd of, not to be defin'd:
He that pretends to most, too, has least share in't.
'Tis a ragged virtue: Honesty! no more on't.

_Jaf._ Sure thou art honest!

_Pier._ So, indeed, men think me;
But they're mistaken, Jaffier: I'm a rogue
As well as they;
A fine, gay, bold-fac'd villain as thou seest me.
'Tis true, I pay my debts, when they're contracted;
I steal from no man; would not cut a throat
To gain admission to a great man's purse,
Or a whore's bed; I'd not betray my friend
To get his place or fortune; I scorn to flatter
A blown-up fool above me, or crush the wretch beneath me;
Yet, Jaffier, for all this I'm a villain.

_Jaf._ A villain!

_Pier._ Yes, a most notorious villain;
To see the sufferings of my fellow creatures,
And own myself a man: to see our senators
Cheat the deluded people with a show
Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of.
They say, by them our hands are free from fetters;
Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds;
Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow;
Drive us, like wrecks, down the rough tide of power,
Whilst no hold's left to save us from destruction.
All that bear this are villains, and I one,
Not to rouse up at the great call of nature,