Free. Myself and all content rest with you.
Enter Malheureux.
Mal. The studious morn, with paler cheek, draws on
The day’s bold light. Hark how the free-born birds
Carol their unaffected passions!
[The nightingales sing.
Now sing they sonnets—thus they cry, We love!
O breath of heaven! thus they, harmless souls, 70
Give entertain to mutual affects.
They have no bawds, no mercenary beds,
No polite restraints, no artificial heats,
No faint dissemblings; no custom makes them blush,
No shame afflicts their name. O you happy beasts!
In whom an inborn heat is not held sin,
How far transcend you wretched, wretched man,
Whom national custom, tyrannous respects
Of slavish order, fetters, lames his power,
Calling that sin in us which in all things else 80
Is Nature’s highest virtue.
O miseri quorum gaudia crimen habent!
Sure Nature against virtue cross doth fall,
Or virtue’s self is oft unnatural.
That I should love a strumpet! I, a man of snow!
Now, shame forsake me—whither am I fallen!
A creature of a public use! my friend’s love, too!
To live to be a talk to men—a shame
To my professed virtue! O accursed reason,
How many eyes hast thou to see thy shame, 90
And yet how blind once to prevent defame!
Free. Diaboli virtus in lumbis est! Morrow, my friend. Come, I could make a tedious scene of this now; but what——Pah! thou art in love with a courtezan! Why, sir, should we loathe all strumpets, some men should hate their own mothers or sisters: a sin against kind, I can tell you.
Mal. May it beseem a wise man to be in love?
Free. Let wise men alone, ’twill beseem thee and me well enough. 100
Mal. Shall I not offend the vowe[d] band of our friendship?