Fisc. Oh, sir, in these commodities, here’s enough for both; here’s mace for you, and nutmeg for me, in the same fruit, and yet the owner has to spare for other friends too.

Jul. My husband’s plantation is like to thrive well betwixt you.

Beam. Horn him; he deserves not so much happiness as he enjoys in you; he’s jealous.

Jul. ’Tis no wonder if a Spaniard looks yellow.

Beam. Betwixt you and me, ’tis a little kind of venture that we make, in doing this Don’s drudgery for him; for the whole nation of them is generally so pocky, that ’tis no longer a disease, but a second nature in them.

Fisc. I have heard indeed, that ’tis incorporated among them, as deeply as the Moors and Jews are; there’s scarce a family, but ’tis crept into their blood, like the new Christians.

Jul. Come, I’ll have no whispering betwixt you; I know you were talking of my husband, because my nose itches.

Beam. Faith, madam, I was speaking in favour of your nation:  What pleasant lives I have known Spaniards to live in England.

Jul. If you love me, let me hear a little.

Beam. We observed them to have much of the nature of our flies; they buzzed abroad a month or two in the summer, would venture about dog-days to take the air in the Park, but all the winter slept like dormice; and, if they ever appeared in public after Michaelmas, their faces shewed the difference betwixt their country and ours, for they look in Spain as if they were roasted, and in England as if they were sodden.

Jul. I’ll not believe your description.

Fisc. Yet our observations of them in Holland are not much unlike it.  I’ve known a great Don at the Hague, with the gentleman of his horse, his major domo, and two secretaries, all dine at four tables, on the quarters of a single pullet:  The victuals of the under servants were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in the other scale:  A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and then he would have whipped it up, as his own fees, at a morsel; but that his lord barred the dice, and reckoned it to him for a part of his board wages.

Beam. In few words, madam, the general notion we had of them, was, that they were very frugal of their Spanish coin, and very liberal of their Neapolitan.

Jul. I see, gentlemen, you are in the way of rallying; therefore let me be no hinderance to your sport; do as much for one another as you have done for our nation.  Pray, Mynheer Fiscal, what think you of the English?

Fisc. Oh, I have an honour for the country.