ANA.  By the same token Nilus hid his head then, he could never find it since.

PHA.  You know, Memory, that was an extreme hot day, and ’tis likely Terra sweat much, and so took cold presently after, that ever since she hath lost her voice.

HER.  A canton ermine added to the field
Is a sure sign the man that bore these arms
Was to his prince as a defensive shield,
Saving him from the force of present harms[260].

PHA.  I know this fellow of old, ’tis a herald:  many a centaur, chimaera[261], barnacle[262], crocodile, hippopotame, and such like toys hath he stolen out of the shop of my Invention, to shape new coats for his upstart gentlemen.  Either Africa must breed more monsters,[263] or you make fewer gentlemen, Master Herald, for you have spent all my devices already.  But since you are here, let me ask you a question in your own profession:  how comes it to pass that the victorious arms of England, quartered with the conquered coat of France, are not placed on the dexter side, but give the flower-de-luce the better hand?

HER.  Because that the three lions are one coat made of two French dukedoms, Normandy and Aquitain.

[PHA.][264] But I pray you, Visus, what joy is that, that follows him?

VIS.  ’Tis Colour, an object of mine, subject to his commandment.

PHA.  Why speaks he not?

VIS.  He is so bashful, he dares not speak for blushing: 
What thing is that? tell me without delay.

BOY.  That’s nothing of itself, yet every way
As like a man as a thing like may be: 
And yet so unlike as clean contrary,
For in one point it every way doth miss,
The right side of it a man’s left side is;
’Tis lighter than a feather, and withal
It fills no place nor room, it is so small.

COM.  SEN.  How now, Visus, have you brought a boy with a riddle to pose us all?

PHA.  Pose us all, and I here?  That were a jest indeed.  My lord, if he have a Sphinx, I have an Oedipus, assure yourself; let’s hear it once again.

BOY.  What thing is that, sir, &c.

PHA.  This such a knotty enigma?  Why, my lord, I think ’tis a woman, for first a woman is nothing of herself, and, again, she is likest a man of anything.

COM.  SEN.  But wherein is she unlike?

PHA.  In everything:  in peevishness, in folly.  ’St, boy?

HEU.  In pride, deceit, prating, lying, cogging, coyness, spite, hate, sir.

PHA.  And in many more such vices.  Now, he may well say, the left side a man’s right side is, for a cross wife is always contrary to her husband, ever contradicting what he wisheth for, like to the verse in Martial, Velle tuum.

MEM. Velle tuum nolo, Dindyme, nolle volo.

PHA.  Lighter than a feather—­doth any man make question of that?

MEM.  They need not, for I remember I saw a cardinal weigh them once, and the woman was found three grains lighter.