LUCIO.
Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy.
DUKE.
I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was not inclined that way.
LUCIO.
O, sir, you are deceived.
DUKE.
’Tis not possible.
LUCIO.
Who, not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish. The Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too, that let me inform you.
DUKE.
You do him wrong, surely.
LUCIO.
Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the Duke; and I believe I know the cause of his withdrawing.
DUKE.
What, I prithee, might be the cause?
LUCIO.
No, pardon. ’Tis a secret must be locked within the teeth and the lips. But this I can let you understand: the greater file of the subject held the Duke to be wise.
DUKE.
Wise? Why, no question but he was.