EUDEMUS.
’Tis fit, my lord.
SEJANUS.
Why, sir, I do not ask you of their urines,
Whose smell’s most violet, or whose siege is best,
Or who makes hardest faces on her stool?
Which lady sleeps with her own face a nights?
Which puts her teeth off, with her clothes, in court?
Or, which her hair, which her complexion,
And, in which box she puts it; These were questions,
That might, perhaps, have put your gravity
To some defence of blush. But, I enquired,
Which was the wittiest, merriest, wantonnest?
Harmless intergatories, but conceits.—
Methinks Augusta should be most perverse,
And froward in her fit.
EUDEMUS.
She’s so, my lord.
SEJANUS.
I knew it: and Mutilia the most jocund.
EUDEMUS.
’Tis very true, my lord.
SEJANUS.
And why would you
Conceal this from me, now? Come, what is Livia?
I know she’s quick and quaintly spirited,
And will have strange thoughts, when she is at leisure:
She tells them all to you.
EUDEMUS.
My noblest lord,
He breathes not in the empire, or on earth.
Whom I would be ambitious to serve
In any act, that may preserve mine honour,
Before your lordship.
SEJANUS.
Sir, you can lose no honour,
By trusting aught to me. The coarsest act
Done to my service, I can so requite,
As all the world shall style it honourable:
Your idle, virtuous definitions,
Keep honour poor, and are as scorn’d as vain:
Those deeds breathe honour that do suck in gain.
EUDEMUS.
But, good my lord, if I should thus betray
The counsels of my patient, and a lady’s
Of her high place and worth; what might your lordship,
Who presently are to trust me with your own,
Judge of my faith?
SEJANUS.
Only the best I swear.
Say now that I should utter you my grief,
And with it the true cause; that it were love,
And love to Livia; you should tell her this:
Should she suspect your faith; I would you could
Tell me as much from her; see if my brain
Could be turn’d jealous.