LEONTES.
Cease; no more.
You smell this business with a sense as cold
As is a dead man’s nose: but I do see’t and feel’t,
As you feel doing thus; and see withal
The instruments that feel.
ANTIGONUS.
If it be so,
We need no grave to bury honesty.
There’s not a grain of it the face to sweeten
Of the whole dungy earth.
LEONTES.
What! Lack I credit?
FIRST LORD.
I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,
Upon this ground: and more it would content me
To have her honour true than your suspicion,
Be blam’d for’t how you might.
LEONTES.
Why, what need we
Commune with you of this, but rather follow
Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness
Imparts this; which, if you, or stupified
Or seeming so in skill, cannot or will not
Relish a truth, like us, inform yourselves
We need no more of your advice: the matter,
The loss, the gain, the ord’ring on’t, is all
Properly ours.
ANTIGONUS.
And I wish, my liege,
You had only in your silent judgement tried it,
Without more overture.
LEONTES.
How could that be?
Either thou art most ignorant by age,
Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo’s flight,
Added to their familiarity,
(Which was as gross as ever touch’d conjecture,
That lack’d sight only, nought for approbation
But only seeing, all other circumstances
Made up to th’ deed) doth push on this proceeding.
Yet, for a greater confirmation
(For in an act of this importance, ’twere
Most piteous to be wild), I have dispatch’d in post
To sacred Delphos, to Apollo’s temple,
Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
Of stuff’d sufficiency: now from the oracle
They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had,
Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?
FIRST LORD.
Well done, my lord.
LEONTES.
Though I am satisfied, and need no more
Than what I know, yet shall the oracle
Give rest to the minds of others, such as he
Whose ignorant credulity will not
Come up to th’ truth. So have we thought it good
From our free person she should be confin’d,
Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence
Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;
We are to speak in public; for this business
Will raise us all.
ANTIGONUS.
[Aside.] To laughter, as I take it,
If the good truth were known.