O the Vanity of these Men! Fainall, dee hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the Lover's Gift –– Lord, what is a Lover, that it can give? Why one makes Lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases: And then if one pleases, one makes more.

WITWOUD. Very pretty. Why you make no more of making of Lovers, Madam, than of making so many Card-matches.

MILLAMANT. One no more owes one's Beauty to a Lover, than one's Wit to an Eccho: They can but reflect what we look and say; vain empty Things if we are silent or unseen, and want a being.

MIRABELL. Yet to those two vain empty Things, you owe two the greatest Pleasures of your Life.

MILLAMANT. How so?

MIRABELL. To your Lover you owe the pleasure of hearing your selves prais'd; and to an Eccho the pleasure of hearing your selves talk.

WITWOUD. But I know a Lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an Eccho fair play; she has that everlasting Rotation of Tongue, that an Eccho must wait till she dies, before it can catch her last Words.

MILLAMANT. O Fiction; Fainall, let us leave these Men.

MIRABELL aside to Mrs. Fainall. Draw off Witwoud.

MRS. FAINALL. Immediately; I have a Word or two for Mr. Witwoud.

MIRABELL. I wou'd beg a little private Audience too –

 

Exit Witwoud and Mrs. Fainall.

 

You had the Tyranny to deny me last Night; tho' you knew I came to impart a Secret to you, that concern'd my Love.

MILLAMANT. You saw I was engag'd.

MIRABELL. Unkind. You had the leisure to entertain a Herd of Fools; Things who visit you from their excessive Idleness; bestowing on your easiness that time, which is the incumbrance of their Lives. How can you find delight in such Society? It is impossible they should admire you, they are not capable: Or if they were, it shou'd be to you as a Mortification; for sure to please a Fool is some degree of Folly.

MILLAMANT. I please my self –– Besides sometimes to converse with Fools, is for my Health.

MIRABELL. Your Health! Is there a worse Disease than the Conversation of Fools?

MILLAMANT. Yes, the Vapours; Fools are Physicks for it, next to Assa-fœtida.

MIRABELL. You are not in a Course of Fools?

MILLAMANT. Mirabell, If you persist in this offensive Freedom –– You'll displease me –– I think I must resolve after all, not to have you –– We shan't agree.

MIRABELL. Not in our Physick it may be.

MILLAMANT. And yet our Distemper in all likelihood will be the same; for we shall be sick of one another. I shan't endure to be reprimanded, nor instructed; 'tis so dull to act always by Advice, and so tedious to be told of ones Faults –– I can't bear it. Well, I won't have you Mirabell –– I'm resolv'd –– I think –– You may go –– Ha, ha, ha.