Enter Servant.

Serv. ’Tis signior Mosca, sir.

Corv. Let him come in. [Exit Serv.] His master’s dead: there’s yet
Some good to help the bad.—

Mos. I fear you cannot, sir.

Crov. Is’t not his death?

Mos. Rather the contrary.

Corv. Not his recovery?

Mos. Yes, sir.

Corv. I am curs’d,
I am bewitch’d, my crosses meet to vex me.
How? how? how? how?

Mos. Why, sir, with Scoto’s oil;
Corbaccio and Voltore brought of it,
Whilst I was busy in an inner room—

Corv. Death! that damn’d mountebank; but for the law
Now, I could kill the rascal: it cannot be,
His oil should have that virtue. Have not I
Known him a common rogue, come fidling in
To the osteria, with a tumbling whore,
And, when he has done all his forced tricks, been glad
Of a poor spoonful of dead wine, with flies in’t?
It cannot be. All his ingredients
Are a sheep’s gall, a roasted bitch’s marrow,
Some few sod earwigs, pounded caterpillars,
A little capon’s grease, and fasting spittle:
I know them to a dram.

Mos. I know not, sir;
But some on’t, there, they pour’d into his ears,
Some in his nostrils, and recover’d him;
Applying but the fricace.

Corv. Pox o’ that fricace!

Mos. And since, to seem the more officious
And flatt’ring of his health, there, they have had,
At extreme fees, the college of physicians
Consulting on him, how they might restore him;
Where one would have a cataplasm of spices,
Another a flay’d ape clapp’d to his breast,
A third would have it a dog, a fourth an oil,
With wild cats’ skins: at last, they all resolved
That, to preserve him, was no other means,
But some young woman must be straight sought out,
Lusty, and full of juice, to sleep by him;
And to this service, most unhappily,
And most unwillingly, am I now employ’d,
Which here I thought to pre-acquaint you with,
For your advice, since it concerns you most;
Because, I would not do that thing might cross
Your ends, on whom I have my whole dependance, sir:
Yet, if I do it not, they may delate
My slackness to my patron, work me out
Of his opinion; and there all your hopes,
Ventures, or whatsoever, are all frustrate!
I do but tell you, sir. Besides, they are all
Now striving, who shall first present him; therefore—
I could entreat you, briefly conclude somewhat;
Prevent them if you can.

Corv. Death to my hopes,
This is my villainous fortune! Best to hire
Some common courtezan.

Mos. Ay, I thought on that, sir;
But they are all so subtle, full of art—
And age again doting and flexible,
So as—I cannot tell—we may, perchance,
Light on a quean may cheat us all.

Corv. ’Tis true.