stop-gap, where honest men keep aloof! To stretch or shrink seven times
in an instant, like the butterfly on a pin? To be privy registrar in
chief and clerk of the jordan? To be the cap-and-bell buffoon on which
your master sharpens his wit? Well, well, let it be so. I will carry you
about with me, as I would a marmot of rare training. You shall skip and
dance, like a tamed monkey, to the howling of the damned; fetch, carry,
and serve; and with your courtly arts enliven the wailings of everlasting
despair!

MARSHAL. Anything you please, dear major! Whatever you please! Only
take away the pistols!

FERDINAND. How he stands there, poor trembling wretch! There he stands,
a blot on the sixth day of creation. He looks as if he were a piratical
counterfeit of the Almighty original. Pity, eternal pity! that an atom
of brains should lie wasting in so barren a skull! That single atom
bestowed upon a baboon might have made him a perfect man, whereas it is
now a mere useless fragment. And that she should share her heart with a
thing like this! Monstrous! Incredible! A wretch more formed to wean
from sin than to excite it!

MARSHAL. Praised be Heaven! he is getting witty.

FERDINAND. I will let him live! That toleration which spares the
caterpillar shall be extended to him! Men shall look on him in wonder,
and, shrugging their shoulders, admire the wise dispensation of
Providence, which can feed its creatures with husks and scourings; which
spreads the table for the raven on the gallows, and for the courtier in
the slime of majesty. We wonder at the wisdom of Providence, which even
in the world of spirits maintains its staff of venomous reptiles for the