Dam.  No matter; there’s enough such birds everywhere.

Hub.  Yes, women are as common as glasses in Tavernes, and often drunke in and more often crackt.  I shall grow lazy if I fight not; I would faine play with halfe a dozen Fencers, but it should be at sharpe.[140]

Dam.  And they are all for foyles.

Hub.  Foyl’d let ’em be then.

Dam.  You have had fencing enough in the field, and for women the Christians fill’d[141] your markets.

Hub.  Yes, and those markets were our Shambles.  Flesh enough! 
It made me weary of it.  Since I came home
I have beene wondrous troubled in my sleepes,
And often heard to sigh in dead of night
As if my heart would cracke.  You talk of Christians: 
Ile tell you a strange thing, a kind of melting in
My soule, as ’twere before some heavenly fire,
When in their deaths (whom they themselves call Martyrs)
It was all rocky.  Nothing, they say, can soften
A Diamond but Goates blood;[142] they perhaps were Lambs
In whose blood I was softened.

Dam.  Pray tell how.

Hub.  I will:  after some three hours being in Carthage
I rusht into a Temple.  Starr’d all with lights;
Which with my drawne sword rifling, in a roome
Hung full of Pictures, drawne so full of sweetnesse
They struck a reverence in me, found I a woman,
A Lady all in white; the very Candles
Took brightnesse from her eyes and those cleare Pearles
Which in aboundance falling on her cheekes
Gave them a lovely bravery.  At my rough entrance
She shriek’d and kneel’d, and holding up a paire
Of Ivory fingers begg’t that I would not
(Though I did kill) dishonour her, and told me
She would pray for me.  Never did Christian
So near come to my heart-strings; I let my Sword
Fall from me, stood astonish’t, and not onely
Sav’d her my selfe but guarded her from others.

Dam.  Done like a Souldier.

Hub.  Blood is not ever
The wholsom’st Wine to drinke.  Doubtlesse these Christians
Serve some strange Master, and it needes must bee
A wonderfull sweete wages which he paies them;
And though men murmour, get they once here footing,
Then downe goes our Religion, downe our Altars,
And strange things be set up.—­I cannot tell: 
We, held so pure, finde wayes enough to hell. 
Fall out what can, I care not; Ile to Bellizarius.

Dam.  Will you? pray carry to him my best wishes.

Hub.  I can carry anything but Blowes, Coles,[143] my Drink, and that clapper of the Divell, the tongue of a Scould.  Farewell.

[Exeunt.

(SCENE 2.)

Flourish:  Enter the King, Antony, Cosmo, all about
the King, and Bellizarius.