SCENE IV.[2749

_Enter_ MALEVOLE _and_ PIETRO, _still disguised, at several doors_.

_Mal._ How do you? How dost duke?

_Pietro._ O, let The last day fall! drop, drop on our curs’d heads! Let heaven unclasp itself, vomit forth flames.

_Mal._ O, do not rave, do not turn player; (5) there’s more of them than can well live one by another already. What, art an infidel still?

_Pietro._ I am amazed, struck in a swoon with wonder: I am commanded to poison thee—

_Mal._ I am commanded to poison thee at (10) supper—

_Pietro._ At supper—

_Mal._ In the citadel—

_Pietro._ In the citadel.

_Mal._ Cross capers! tricks! Truth o’ (15) heaven! he would discharge us as boys do eldern guns one pellet to strike out another. Of what faith art now?

_Pietro._ All is damnation; wickedness extreme: There is no faith in man. 20

_Mal._ In none but usurers and brokers; they deceive no man: men take ’em for blood-suckers, and so they are. Now, God deliver me from my friends!

_Pietro._ Thy friends! 25

_Mal._ Yes, from my friends; for from mine enemies I’ll deliver myself. O, cut-throat friendship is the rankest villainy! Mark this Mendoza; mark him for a villain: but heaven will send a plague upon him for a rogue. 30

_Pietro._ O world!

_Mal._ World! ’tis the only region of death, the greatest shop of the devil; the cruelest prison of men, out of the which none pass without paying their dearest breath for a fee; (35) there’s nothing perfect in it but extreme, extreme calamity, such as comes yonder.