Re-enter Officers, bearing Volpone on a couch.

Volt. Here, here,
The testimony comes, that will convince,
And put to utter dumbness their bold tongues:
See here, grave fathers, here’s the ravisher,
The rider on men’s wives, the great impostor,
The grand voluptuary! Do you not think
These limbs should affect venery? or these eyes
Covet a concubine? pray you mark these hands;
Are they not fit to stroke a lady’s breasts?—
Perhaps he doth dissemble!

Bon. So he does.

Volt. Would you have him tortured?

Bon. I would have him proved.

Volt. Best try him then with goads, or burning irons;
Put him to the strappado: I have heard
The rack hath cured the gout; ’faith, give it him,
And help him of a malady; be courteous.
I’ll undertake, before these honour’d fathers,
He shall have yet as many left diseases,
As she has known adulterers, or thou strumpets.—
O, my most equal hearers, if these deeds,
Acts of this bold and most exorbitant strain,
May pass with sufferance, what one citizen
But owes the forfeit of his life, yea, fame,
To him that dares traduce him? which of you
Are safe, my honour’d fathers? I would ask,
With leave of your grave fatherhoods, if their plot
Have any face or colour like to truth?
Or if, unto the dullest nostril here,
It smell not rank, and most abhorred slander?
I crave your care of this good gentleman,
Whose life is much endanger’d by their fable;
And as for them, I will conclude with this,
That vicious persons, when they’re hot and flesh’d
In impious acts, their constancy abounds:
Damn’d deeds are done with greatest confidence.

1 Avoc. Take them to custody, and sever them.

2 Avoc. ’Tis pity two such prodigies should live.

1 Avoc. Let the old gentleman be return’d with care.
I’m sorry our credulity hath wrong’d him.

[Exeunt Officers with Volpone.

4 Avoc. These are two creatures!

3 Avoc. I’ve an earthquake in me.

2 Avoc. Their shame, even in their cradles, fled their faces.

4 Avoc. You have done a worthy service to the state, sir,
In their discovery.

1 Avoc. You shall hear, ere night,
What punishment the court decrees upon them.

Volt. We thank your fatherhoods.—How like you it?

Mos. Rare.
I’d have your tongue, sir, tipt with gold for this;
I’d have you be the heir to the whole city;
The earth I’d have want men, ere you want living:
They’re bound to erect your statue in St. Mark’s.
Signior Corvino, I would have you go
And shew yourself, that you have conquer’d.

Corv. Yes.

Mos. It was much better that you should profess
Yourself a cuckold thus, than that the other
Should have been proved.