Lawyer. I most graduatically thank your lordship: I shall have use for them elsewhere.
Mont. I shall be plainer with you, and paint out Your follies in more natural red and white Than that upon your cheek.
Vit. Oh, you mistake! You raise a blood as noble in this cheek As ever was your mother's.
Mont. I must spare you, till proof cry whore to that. Observe this creature here, my honour'd lords, A woman of must prodigious spirit, In her effected.
Vit. My honourable lord, It doth not suit a reverend cardinal To play the lawyer thus.
Mont. Oh, your trade instructs your language! You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems; Yet like those apples travellers report To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah stood, I will but touch her, and you straight shall see She 'll fall to soot and ashes.
Vit. Your envenom'd 'pothecary should do 't.
Mont. I am resolv'd, Were there a second paradise to lose, This devil would betray it.
Vit. O poor Charity! Thou art seldom found in scarlet.
Mont. Who knows not how, when several night by night Her gates were chok'd with coaches, and her rooms Outbrav'd the stars with several kind of lights; When she did counterfeit a prince's court In music, banquets, and most riotous surfeits; This whore forsooth was holy.
Vit. Ha! whore! what 's that?
Mont. Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall; I 'll give their perfect character. They are first, Sweetmeats which rot the eater; in man's nostrils Poison'd perfumes. They are cozening alchemy; Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores! Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren, As if that nature had forgot the spring. They are the true material fire of hell: Worse than those tributes i' th' Low Countries paid, Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep, Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin. They are those brittle evidences of law, Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate For leaving out one syllable. What are whores! They are those flattering bells have all one tune, At weddings, and at funerals. Your rich whores Are only treasures by extortion fill'd, And emptied by curs'd riot. They are worse, Worse than dead bodies which are begg'd at gallows, And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man Wherein he is imperfect. What's a whore! She 's like the guilty counterfeited coin, Which, whosoe'er first stamps it, brings in trouble All that receive it.
Vit. This character 'scapes me.
Mont. You, gentlewoman! Take from all beasts and from all minerals Their deadly poison----
Vit. Well, what then?
Mont. I 'll tell thee; I 'll find in thee a 'pothecary's shop, To sample them all.
Fr. Ambass. She hath liv'd ill.
Eng. Ambass. True, but the cardinal 's too bitter.
Mont. You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery, Enters the devil murder.
Fran. Your unhappy husband Is dead.
Vit. Oh, he 's a happy husband! Now he owes nature nothing.
Fran. And by a vaulting engine.
Mont. An active plot; he jump'd into his grave.
Fran. What a prodigy was 't, That from some two yards' height, a slender man Should break his neck!
Mont. I' th' rushes!
Fran. And what's more, Upon the instant lose all use of speech, All vital motion, like a man had lain Wound up three days. Now mark each circumstance.
Mont. And look upon this creature was his wife! She comes not like a widow; she comes arm'd With scorn and impudence: is this a mourning-habit?
Vit. Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, I would have bespoke my mourning.
Mont. Oh, you are cunning!
Vit. You shame your wit and judgment, To call it so. What! is my just defence By him that is my judge call'd impudence? Let me appeal then from this Christian court, To the uncivil Tartar.
Mont. See, my lords, She scandals our proceedings.