Per. And, I have heard, they are most lewd impostors;
Made all of terms and shreds; no less beliers
Of great men’s favours, than their own vile med’cines;
Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths:
Selling that drug for two-pence, ere they part,
Which they have valued at twelve crowns before.

Sir P. Sir, calumnies are answer’d best with silence.
Yourself shall judge.—Who is it mounts, my friends?

Mos. Scoto of Mantua, sir.

Sir P. Is’t he? Nay, then
I’ll proudly promise, sir, you shall behold
Another man than has been phant’sied to you.
I wonder yet, that he should mount his bank,
Here in this nook, that has been wont t’appear
In face of the Piazza!—Here he comes.

Enter Volpone, disguised as a mountebank Doctor, and followed by a crowd of people.

Volp. Mount, zany. [to Nano.]

Mob. Follow, follow, follow, follow!

Sir P. See how the people follow him! he’s a man
May write ten thousand crowns in bank here. Note,

Per. ’Tis worth it, sir.

Volp. Most noble gentlemen, and my worthy patrons! It may seem strange, that I, your Scoto Mantuano, who was ever wont to fix my bank in face of the public Piazza, near the shelter of the Portico to the Procuratia, should now, after eight months’ absence from this illustrious city of Venice, humbly retire myself into an obscure nook of the Piazza.

Sir P. Did not I now object the same?

Per. Peace, sir.

Volp. Let me tell you: I am not, as your Lombard proverb saith, cold on my feet; or content to part with my commodities at a cheaper rate, than I accustomed: look not for it. Nor that the calumnious reports of that impudent detractor, and shame to our profession, (Alessandro Buttone, I mean,) who gave out, in public, I was condemned a sforzato to the galleys, for poisoning the cardinal Bembo’s—cook, hath at all attached, much less dejected me. No, no, worthy gentlemen; to tell you true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlitani, that spread their cloaks on the pavement, as if they meant to do feats of activity, and then come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccacio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turks’ gallies, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christians’ gallies, where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, enjoined them by their confessors, for base pilferies.

Sir P. Note but his bearing, and contempt of these.

Volp. These turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogues, with one poor groat’s-worth of unprepared antimony, finely wrapt up in several scartoccios, are able, very well, to kill their twenty a week, and play; yet, these meagre, starved spirits, who have half stopt the organs of their minds with earthy oppilations, want not their favourers among your shrivell’d sallad-eating artizans, who are overjoyed that they may have their half-pe’rth of physic; though it purge them into another world, it makes no matter.

Sir P. Excellent! have you heard better language, sir?