his tavern bills took the shape of the one purloined by Prince Henry,
in which there was but one halfpenny-worth of bread to an intolerable
deal of sack. It was this inordinate consumption of sack (and not
sighing and grief, as he suggests) which blew him up like a bladder. A
life of leisure in London always had, and still has, its temptations.
Falstaff's means were described by the Chief Justice of Henry IV. as
very slender, but this was after they had been wasted for years.
Originally they were more ample, and gave him the opportunity of
living at ease with his friends. No domestic cares disturbed the even
tenor of his life. Bardolph says he was better accommodated than with
a wife. Like many another man about town, he thought about settling
down when he was getting up in years. He weekly swore, so he tells us,
to marry old Mistress Ursula, but this was only after he saw the first
white hair on his chin. But he never led Mistress Ursula to the altar.
The only other women for whom he formed an early attachment were
Mistress Quickly, the hostess of the Boar's Head, and Doll Tearsheet,
who is described by the page as a proper gentlewoman, and a kinswoman
of his master's. There is no denying that Falstaff was on terms of
intimacy with Mistress Quickly, but he never admitted that he made her
an offer of marriage. She, however, asserted it in the strongest
terms, and with a wealth of circumstance.

We must transcribe her story: 'Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt
goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal
fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the Prince broke thy head
for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor; thou didst swear to
me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady
thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's
wife, come in then, and call me Gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a
mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby