Leon. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; [039] but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.
[040] Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.
[041] Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath help to eat [042] it: he is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach.
Mess. And a good soldier too, lady.
045 Beat. And a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord?
Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.
Beat. It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed [050] man: but for the stuffing,—well, we are all mortal.
Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.
Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that! In our last conflict 055 four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough [057] to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between [058] himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion 060 now? He hath every month a new sworn brother.
Mess. Is’t possible?