Fal.

And yet I know not whether I ought to wish that neither; for a good day to him must be a bad one to somebody. A man of any conscience, or humanity, knows not how to salute fellows of such an occupation: for who would wish the rest of mankind lame and blind, sick and sorry, to find them employment, forsooth?—Poor Pistol! I would not lose him, methinks; for, tho' he be a braggadocio knave, he is an old acquaintance; and I never could find in my heart to part with old acquaintance merely because they were good for nothing. King Hal is another sort of a man to what I am, to abandon his old friends in his prosperity thus. Poor Pistol!

Bar.

Ecod, Sir John, it happen'd lucky for me, I can tell ye, that I came off so well as I did, yesterday.

Fal.

Ay, by'r lady, thou playd'st fair to get off in a whole skin, and leave thy friend and master in extremity.

Bar.

Nay 'pon my honour, Sir John, I did my utmost to keep up with you: but 'twas unpossible; and indeed it was very fortunable that I was not myself trod to death by the populous.

Fal.

Thou! tell me the moon is a Suffolk cheese or a Windsor pear. Thou! Have I not seen thee clear the ring, without a staff at a bear-baiting? Thou might'st make thy way through a legion, nay the millions of a croisade: why, who would come within a fathom of that firebrand, thy nose? It is as a flaming two-edged sword. Wouldst thou make me believe the villains would come

near thee, to burn their holiday cloaths? Thou wouldst have set them a-blazing like stubble, and have consum'd the whole procession of heralds, like men of straw. A plague upon them, it was in their avoiding thee, I suppose, that I had like to have died a martyr to corpulency.

Bar.

Sir John, you are always plaguing me about my face; what would you have me do with it?

Fal.

Do with it! If there were water enough in the Thames, I would have thee quench it. But water, I fear, can do nothing for thee; since I remember, when we rode last from Canterbury, with the rain beating full in our faces, thou cam'st into the Borough with thy nose and cheeks glowing red-hot, altho' they had been hissing all the way like a horse-shoe or a tailor's goose. God forgive me—but when thou rann'st behind the hedge, in fear of the officer; I could not help comparing him and thee to Moses and the burning-bush. But thou wilt in time be consumed: thy fire must out.

Bar.

I would it were out, so be I might hear no more on't. In troth, Sir John, if I must be always your butt, I shall seek another service I assure ye.

Fal.

Nay, nay, good Bardolph, that must not be. I speak not in disparagement, heav'n knows: for I mean to cherish thee against the lack of fuel, or the visitation of a Dutch winter. Thou wilt stand me in good stead for a stove, and save me a noble a week in the purchase of pitcoal.

Bar.

'Sblood, Sir John, I'll bear it no longer.

Fal.

Hold, Bardolph, where art thou going? thou glow-worm in magnature with thy tail upwards; thou pumpion-headed rascal, stay, or—

Bar.

Give me good words, then, Sir John. Why pumpkin-head, pray now?

Fal.

Hast thou never seen a pumpion, fantastically carv'd and set over a candle's-end, on a gate-post, to frighten ale-wives from gossiping by owl-light? That is a type of thee—that is thy emblem: thy head being hollow, full of light, and easily broken; as thou shalt experience, if thou offer'st to fly thy colours till disbanded by authority. I

shall need thee, I tell thee, to keep me warm under the coldness of the king's displeasure.

Bar.

Indeed, Sir John, burnt sack and ginger will do you more good: for whatsomever light I may give, I am sure, set aside choler, I am as cold as e'er a white-liver'd younker in town.

Fal.

Cold, sayst thou! thy face would condemn thee for an incendiary before any bench of judicature in the kingdom! thou wouldst carry apparent combustibles into court with thee. Tell not me of cold. Thou wouldst certainly have been hang'd long ago, had not the sheriff been afraid thou wouldst have fir'd the hangman or the gibbet.

Bar.

Why, Sir John, I have been your attendant off and on these twenty years, come Candlemas; and I don't find I have had any such effect on you.

Fal.

The reason, you rogue, the reason; am not I oblig'd to keep a pipe of Canary constantly discharging on me? Are not the tapsters perpetually employ'd? the sack-buckets for ever a going, to keep me from blazing? And yet at times my skin is shrivell'd up like an April pippin. Mark me but walking an hundred paces, with thee glowing at my heels, if I do not broil and drip like a roasting ox.

Bar.

Ah, you are pleas'd to be hard upon me, Sir John, but I'm sure my face never hurt a hair of your head.

Fal.

No! look at 'em—hath it not turn'd them all grey? Twenty years ago, before they were calcin'd by thy fire, my locks were of a nut-brown.

Bar.

Why, you grow old, Sir John.

Fal.

Old! what call ye old? I am a little more than threescore: and Methusalem liv'd to near a thousand. Why may not I be a patriarch, and beget sons and daughters these hundred years, myself?

Bar.

Then you must get a wife, Sir John, for your common fields, you know, never bear clover.

Fal.

Marry! what to be made a cuckold of, I warrant ye?

Bar.

Why, Sir John, if you should marry, you would not like to be singular, I suppose.

Fal.

Nay, for the matter of that, all's one: but who will have me? Your dames of breeding are too fine and finicking for me to bear with them.

Bar.

Ay, or for them to bear you, either, Sir John.

Fal.

Nay, whoever has me, she must be no tenderling: she must be none of your gingerbread lasses, that will crumble to pieces in the towzling. She must be none of your wishy-washy, panada, gentry neither; your curd and whey gentlefolks, that cannot support the embraces of a soldier. I must have a kicksy-wicksey of more substantial stuff.

Bar.

Why, Sir John, what say you to Madam Ursula, your old sweetheart? You have courted her to my knowledge these twenty years last past. I suppose you know her great aunt is dead, and has left her four hundred marks a year.

Fal.

No, by the lord, I heard nothing on't. She sent me a letter, indeed, into Gloucestershire; but, I was over a bottle, and would not interrupt the glass to read it. I knew it was hers by the superscription, which by the way, however, was as unintelligible as the hand-writing on the wall. It had never reached me had not the bearer been a decypherer. Go, Bardolph, and fetch it: you will find it among other trumpery in my cloak-bag.