SCENE VII.[1731

VOLPONE. [_Enter_] VOLTORE.

_Volt._ Outstript thus, by a parasite! a slave, Would run on errands, and make legs for crumbs! Well, what I’ll do——

_Volp._ The court stays for your worship. I e’en rejoice, sir, at your worship’s happiness, And that it fell into so learned hands, 5 That understand the fing’ring——

_Volt._ What do you mean?

_Volp._ I mean to be a suitor to your worship, For the small tenement, out of reparations,[1732] That, at the end of your long row of houses, By the Piscaria: it was, in Volpone’s time, 10 Your predecessor, ere he grew diseas’d, A handsome, pretty, custom’d[1733] hawdy-house As any was in Venice, none disprais’d; But fell with him: his body and that house Decay’d together.

_Volt._ Come, sir, leave your prating. 15

_Volp._ Why, if your worship give me but your hand That I may ha’ the refusal, I have done. ’T is a mere toy to you, sir; candle-rents; As your learn’d worship knows——

_Volt._ What do I know?

_Volp._ Marry, no end of your wealth, sir; God decrease it! 20

_Volt._ Mistaking knave! what, mock’st thou my misfortune? [_Exit._]

_Volt._ His blessing on your heart, sir; would ’t were more!—— Now to my first again, at the next corner. [_Exit._]