Mal. I never observed so much.
Pass. Horrible sore eyes; and so hath every cuckold, for the roots of the horns spring in the eyeballs, and that’s the reason the horn of a cuckold is as tender as his eye, or as that growing in the woman’s forehead twelve
years since,[400] that could not endure to be touched. The duke hangs down his head like a columbine. 22
Mal. Passarello, why do great men beg fools?[401]
Pass. As the Welshman stole rushes when there was nothing else to filch; only to keep begging in fashion.
Mal. Pooh, thou givest no good reason; thou speakest like a fool.
Pass. Faith, I utter small fragments, as your knight courts your city widow with jingling[402] of his gilt spurs, advancing his bush-coloured beard,[403] and taking tobacco: this is all the mirror of their knightly complements.[404] Nay,
I shall talk when my tongue is a-going once; ’tis like a citizen on horseback, evermore in a false gallop. 33
Mal. And how doth Maquerelle fare nowadays?
Pass. Faith, I was wont to salute her as our English women are at their first landing in Flushing;[405] I would call her whore: but now that antiquity leaves her as an old piece of plastic[406] to work by, I only ask her how her rotten teeth fare every morning, and so leave her. She was the first that ever invented perfumed smocks for the gentlewomen, and woollen shoes, for fear of creaking for the visitant. She were an excellent lady, but that her face peeleth like Muscovy glass.[407] 43