Gom. I have looked at both. By the sun-clock the shadow is yet a little distant from the second line. By the mechanical clock the hand points to a little after the hour of five.
Bell. What do you say? What else remains for you to do but fetch me the blacksmith from Stone Street, that he may separate my eye-lids by pincers so firmly stuck together? Tell him, that he has to force a door lever, from which the key has been lost.
Gom. Where does he live?
Mal. The boy will be going in earnest. Leave off joking and get up.
Bell. Well, let us get up, since you are so obstinate in mind. Ah! what a vexatious companion you are! Rouse me up, Christ, from the sleep of sin to the watchfulness of justice! Take me from the night of death into the light of life. Amen.
Mal. May this day proceed happily for you!
Bell. And for you, too, the same, and very many more as joyful and prosperous, i.e., may you so pass through it that you neither harm the virtue of any one, nor may any one harm yours. Boy, bring me a clean shirt, for this one I have already worn for six whole days. There, snatch that flea on the leap. Now leave off the hunt. How small a matter it would be to have killed a single flea in this chamber!
Mal. As much as to take a drop of water out of the river Dilia (at Louvain).
Bell. Or yet from the ocean-sea itself. I won’t have the shirt with the creased collar, but the other one with the smooth collar. For what are these creases otherwise at this time of the year than nests or receptacles for lice and fleas.