COM.  SEN.  ’Tis strange, for I have seen gentlewomen wear feathers oftentimes.  Can they carry heavier things than themselves?

MEM.  O, sir, I remember, ’tis their only delight to do so.

COM.  SEN.  But how apply you the last verse? it fills no place, sir.

PHA.  By my faith, that spoils all the former, for these farthingales take up all the room now-a-days; ’tis not a woman, questionless.  Shall I be put down with a riddle?  Sirrah Heuresis, search the corners of your conceit, and find it me quickly.

HEU.  Eh, [Greek:  heureka, heureka] I have it:  ’tis a man’s face in a looking-glass.

PHA.  My lord, ’tis so indeed.  Sirrah let’s see it, for do you see my right eye here?

COM.  SEN.  What of your eye?

PHA.  O lord, sir, this kind of frown is excellent, especially when ’tis sweetened with such a pleasing smile.

COM.  SEN.  Phantastes!

PHA.  O sir, my left eye is my right in the glass, do you see?  By these lips, my garters hang so neatly, my gloves and shoes become my hands and feet so well.  Heuresis, tie my shoe-strings with a new knot—­this point was scarce well-trussed, so, ’tis excellent.  Looking-glasses were a passing invention.  I protest the fittest books for ladies to study on—­

MEM.  Take heed you fall not in love with yourself.  Phantastes, as I remember—­Anamnestes, who was’t that died of the looking disease?

ANA.  Forsooth, Narcissus:  by the same token he was turned to a daffodil, and as he died for love of himself, so, if you remember, there was an old ill-favoured, precious-nosed, babber-lipped, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, slouch-eared slave that, looking himself by chance in a glass, died for pure hate.

PHA.  By the lip of my ——­ I could live and die with this face.

COM.  SEN.  Fie, fie, Phantastes, so effeminate! for shame, leave off.  Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable.  Let’s hear therefore in brief your description.

VIS.  Under the forehead of Mount Cephalou,[265]
That overpeers the coast of Microcosm,
All in the shadow of two pleasant groves,
Stand by two mansion-houses, both as round
As the clear heavens:  both twins, as like each other
As star to star, which by the vulgar sort,
For their resplendent composition,
Are named the bright eyes of Mount Cephalon: 
With four fair rooms those lodgings are contrived,
Four goodly rooms in form most spherical,
Closing each other like the heavenly orbs: 
The first whereof, of nature’s substance wrought,
As a strange moat the other to defend,
Is trained movable by art divine,
Stirring the whole compacture of the rest: 
The second chamber is most curiously
Compos’d of burnish’d and transparent horn.

PHA.  That’s a matter of nothing.  I have known many have such bed-chambers.

MEM.  It may be so, for I remember, being once in the town’s library, I read such a thing in their great book of monuments, called “Cornucopia,” or rather their “Copiacornu.”