Dor. I have cause:  Though all mankind is cause enough for satire.

Bend. Why, then, thou hast revenged thee on mankind.  They say, in fight, thou hadst a thirsty sword, And well ’twas glutted there.

Dor. I spitted frogs; I crushed a heap of emmets;
A hundred of them to a single soul,
And that but scanty weight too.  The great devil
Scarce thanked me for my pains; he swallows vulgar
Like whipped cream,—­feels them not in going down.

Bend. Brave renegade!—­Could’st thou not meet Sebastian?  Thy master had been worthy of thy sword.

Dor. My master!—­By what title? 
Because I happened to be born where he
Happened to be king?—­And yet I served him;
Nay, I was fool enough to love him too.—­
You know my story, how I was rewarded
For fifteen hard campaigns, still hooped in iron,
And why I turned Mahometan.  I’m grateful;
But whosoever dares to injure me,
Let that man know, I dare to be revenged.

Bend. Still you run off from bias:—­Say, what moves Your present spleen?

Dor. You marked not what I told you. 
I killed not one that was his maker’s image;
I met with none but vulgar two-legged brutes: 
Sebastian was my aim; he was a man: 
Nay,—­though he hated me, and I hate him,
Yet I must do him right,—­he was a man,
Above man’s height, even towering to divinity: 
Brave, pious, generous, great, and liberal;
Just as the scales of heaven, that weigh the seasons. 
He loved his people; him they idolized;
And thence proceeds my mortal hatred to him;
That, thus unblameable to all besides,
He erred to me alone: 
His goodness was diffused to human kind,
And all his cruelty confined to me.

Bend. You could not meet him then?

Dor. No, though I sought
Where ranks fell thickest.—­’Twas indeed the place
To seek Sebastian.—­Through a track of death
I followed him, by groans of dying foes;
But still I came too late; for he was flown,
Like lightning, swift before me to new slaughters. 
I mowed across, and made irregular harvest,
Defaced the pomp of battle, but in vain;
For he was still supplying death elsewhere. 
This mads me, that perhaps ignoble hands
Have overlaid him,—­for they could not conquer: 
Murdered by multitudes, whom I alone
Had right to slay.  I too would have been slain;
That, catching hold upon his flitting ghost,
I might have robbed him of his opening heaven,
And dragged him down with me, spite of predestination.

Bend. ’Tis of as much import as Africk’s worth,
To know what came of him, and of Almeyda,
The sister of the vanquished Mahomet,
Whose fatal beauty to her brother drew
The land’s third part, as Lucifer did heaven’s.

Dor. I hope she died in her own female calling,
Choked up with man, and gorged with circumcision. 
As for Sebastian, we must search the field;
And, where we see a mountain of the slain,
Send one to climb, and, looking down below,
There he shall find him at his manly length,
With his face up to heaven, in the red monument,
Which his true sword has digged.