Wretched are princes
  When fortune blasteth but a petty flower
  Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth
  But one pearl from their scepter; but alas!
  When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame,
  All princely titles perish with their name.

Brach. You have said, my lord——

Mont. Enough to give you taste
  How far I am from flattering your greatness.

Brach. Now you that are his second, what say you?
  Do not like young hawks fetch a course about;
  Your game flies fair, and for you.

Fran. Do not fear it:
  I 'll answer you in your own hawking phrase.
  Some eagles that should gaze upon the sun
  Seldom soar high, but take their lustful ease,
  Since they from dunghill birds their prey can seize.
  You know Vittoria?

Brach. Yes.

Fran. You shift your shirt there,
  When you retire from tennis?

Brach. Happily.

Fran. Her husband is lord of a poor fortune,
  Yet she wears cloth of tissue.

Brach. What of this?
  Will you urge that, my good lord cardinal,
  As part of her confession at next shrift,
  And know from whence it sails?

Fran. She is your strumpet——

Brach. Uncivil sir, there 's hemlock in thy breath,
  And that black slander. Were she a whore of mine,
  All thy loud cannons, and thy borrow'd Switzers,
  Thy galleys, nor thy sworn confederates,
  Durst not supplant her.

Fran. Let 's not talk on thunder.
  Thou hast a wife, our sister; would I had given
  Both her white hands to death, bound and lock'd fast
  In her last winding sheet, when I gave thee
  But one.

Brach. Thou hadst given a soul to God then.

Fran. True:
  Thy ghostly father, with all his absolution,
  Shall ne'er do so by thee.

Brach. Spit thy poison.

Fran. I shall not need; lust carries her sharp whip
  At her own girdle. Look to 't, for our anger
  Is making thunderbolts.

Brach. Thunder! in faith,
  They are but crackers.

Fran. We 'll end this with the cannon.

Brach. Thou 'lt get naught by it, but iron in thy wounds,
  And gunpowder in thy nostrils.

Fran. Better that,
  Than change perfumes for plasters.

Brach. Pity on thee!
  'Twere good you 'd show your slaves or men condemn'd,
  Your new-plough'd forehead. Defiance! and I 'll meet thee,
  Even in a thicket of thy ablest men.

Mont. My lords, you shall not word it any further
  Without a milder limit.

Fran. Willingly.

Brach. Have you proclaim'd a triumph, that you bait
  A lion thus?

Mont. My lord!

Brach. I am tame, I am tame, sir.

Fran.