Mar. Go into the coach, nieces, and bid the coachman drive apace.  As for you, mistress, your smooth tongue shall not excuse you.

Lau. By your favour, sir, I’ll accept of the gentlewoman’s civility; I cannot stir a step farther.

Fron. Come in, sweet buds of beauty, you shall have a fire in an inner chamber; and if you please to repose yourself a while, sir, in another room, they shall come out, and wait on you immediately.

Mar. Well, it must be so.

Fron. [Whispering the Ladies.] Your friends are ready in the garden, and will be with you as soon as we have shaken off your uncle.

Ben. A cheat, a cheat! a rank one!  I smell it, old sir, I smell it.

Mar. What’s the matter with the fellow?  Is he distracted?

Ben. No, ’tis you are more likely to be distracted but that there goes some wit to the being mad; and you have not the least grain of wit, to be gulled thus grossly.

Fron. What does the fellow mean?

Ben. The fellow means to detect your villany, and to recover his lost reputation of a wit.

Fron. Why, friend, what villany?  I hope my house is a civil house.

Ben. Yes, a very civil one; for my master lay in of his last clap there, and was treated very civilly, to my knowledge.

Mar. How’s this, how’s this?

Fron. Come, you are a dirty fellow, and I am known to be a person that—­

Ben. Yes, you are known to be a person that—­

Fron. Speak your worst of me; what person am I known to be?

Ben. Why, if you will have it, you are little better than a procuress:  You carry messages betwixt party and party:—­And, in one word, sir, she’s as arrant a fruit-woman as any is about Rome.

Mar. Nay, if she be a fruit-woman, my nieces shall not enter her doors.

Ben. You had best let them enter, you do not know how they may fructify in her house:  For I heard her, with these ears, whisper to them, that their friends were within call.

Mar. This is palpable, this is manifest; I shall remember you, lady fruiterer; I shall have your baskets searched when you bring oranges again.—­Come away, nieces; and thanks, honest fellow, for thy discovery. [Exeunt MARIO and Women.

Ben. Hah couragio!  Il diavolo e morto: Now, I think I have tickled it; this discovery has reinstated me into the empire of my wit again.  Now, in the pomp of this achievement, will I present myself before madam Laura, with a—­Behold, madam, the happy restoration of Benito!

  Enter AURELIAN, CAMILLO, and FRONTONA, over-hearing him,

Oh, now, that I had the mirror, to behold myself in the fulness of my glory! and, oh, that the domineering fop, my master, were in presence, that I might triumph over him! that I might even contemn the wretched wight, the mortal of a grovelling soul, and of a debased understanding. [He looks about him, and sees his master.] How the devil came these three together?  Nothing vexes me, but that I must stand bare to him, after such an enterprise as this is.