CHAPTER XXV
These four honest fellows Faustus, Akercocke, Mephostophiles, and Wagner went out together into the street, and walking there by chance espied four Gentlewomen seeming to be sisters, them they cast to abuse, and they were never content to play any merry pranks for honest sport, but they must be so satirically full of gall, that they commonly proved infamous, sparing neither their good name on whom they committed them nor any kind of villainy, so it might procure mirth: when they had talked sufficiently with them, they did so much that they were contented to ride abroad with them, and so each fetched his horse and came to them masked, and the Gentlewomen were wimpled likewise (for the men as well as women use there to wear masks). Thus they rode to the common furlong where many Italian gentlemen were playing at the Balloon, and there they rode round about, whole armies of shouts accompanying them, they riding still backward and forward, whilst these men-women had sewed their coats to their doublets, and pinned upon their backs things of vile reproach amongst them, then rode they to the Court not yet satisfied, where they were entertained with more merriment and laughter. And when these men-women saw the greatest multitude that was there likely to be, even upon a piece of ground which was higher than all the rest, they leaped down, and by reason of the friendship betwixt their petticoats and their doublets, they haled them all down one after another, the horses ran away, and they lay upon them to their great confusion and reproach, yet they thought all well sith they were personated and masked, but the women stripped off their women’s garments and their head attires, and there they were well known to be four brave noble young Gentlemen brethren, and each of them rent off the masks of Mephostophiles and his mates, and detected them to their great shame, who neither durst revenge themselves for fear of further displeasure, nor of revealing what they were, nor could be moaned of any one for their notable abuses aforehand, so that whereas in others it had been but a common jest, on them it was wonderful strange and ridiculous. So they with shame enough went fretting in vain to their lodging.