USURY.
The law allows me, madam, in some sort.
CONSCIENCE.
But God and I would have thy bounds cut short.
USURY.
For you I reck not; but if God me hate,
Why doth the law allow me in some rate?
CONSCIENCE.
Usury slanders both law and state.
The law allows not, though it tolerate,
And thou art sure be shut out at heaven-gate.
USURY.
You were ever nice: no matter what you prate.
SIMPLICITY. Then it will be with him, as it is with a great man's house in dinner-time! he that knocks, when the door is shut, comes too late.
LUCRE.
Well, Usury, Fraud, and Simony,
Dissimulation, hearken unto me.
My tongue (although in memory it be green)
Cannot declare what horrors I have seen;
Ne can it enter into mortal ears
Unmortified: the furies' fires and fears,
The shrieks, the groans, the tortures, and the pains,
That any soul for each of you sustains—
No pen can write, how Conscience hath me scourg'd,
When with your faults my soul she ever urg'd:
Arithmetic doth fail to number all
The plagues of Sorrow in the den of thrall.
Then tempt me not, nor trouble me no more;
I must not use you as I did before.
If you be found within fair London's gate,
You must to prison, whence we came of late.
Conscience will accuse ye, if ye be in sight.
FRAUD.
That scurvy Conscience works us all the spite.
Enter NEMO.
USURY.
Well, Lucre, yet in thee we have delight.