I am heavy: walk off; I shall talk in my sleep: walk off.
[Exeunt Pages.
Enter Malevole, with cross-bow and pistol.
Mal. Brief, brief: who? the duke! good heaven, that fools
Should stumble upon greatness!—Do not sleep, duke;
Give ye good-morrow: I[480] must be brief, duke;
I am fee’d to murder thee: start not: Mendoza, 50
Mendoza hir’d me; here’s his gold, his pistol,
Cross-bow, and[481] sword: ’tis all as firm as earth.
O fool, fool, chokèd with the common maze
Of easy idiots, credulity!
Make him thine heir! what, thy sworn murderer!
Pietro. O, can it be?
Mal. Can!
Pietro. Discover’d he not Ferneze?
Mal. Yes, but why? but why? for love to thee?
Much, much![482] to be reveng’d upon his rival,
Who had thrust his jaws awry;
Who being slain, suppos’d by thine own hands, 60
Defended by his sword, made thee most loathsome,
Him most gracious with thy loose princess:
Thou, closely yielding egress and regress to her,
Madest him heir; whose hot unquiet lust
Straight tous’d thy sheets, and now would seize thy state.
Politician! wise man! death! to be
Led to the stake like a bull by the horns;
To make even kindness cut a gentle throat!
Life, why art thou numb’d? thou foggy dulness, speak:
Lives not more faith in a home-thrusting tongue 70
Than in these fencing tip-tap courtiers?
Enter Celso, with a hermit’s gown and beard.