Must. I never doubted your lordship’s memory for an ill turn:  And I shall remember him too in the next rising of the mobile for this act of resumption; and more especially for the ghostly counsel he gave me before the emperor, to have hanged myself in silence to have saved his reverence.  The best on’t is, I am beforehand with him for selling one of his slaves twice over; and if he had not come just in the nick, I might have pocketed up the other; for what should a poor man do that gets his living by hard labour, but pray for bad times when he may get it easily?  O for some incomparable tumult!  Then should I naturally wish that the beaten party might prevail; because we have plundered the other side already, and there is nothing more to get of them. 
  Both rich and poor for their own interest pray,
  ’Tis ours to make our fortune while we may;
  For kingdoms are not conquered every day. [Exit.

ACT II.

SCENE I.—­Supposed to be a Terrace Walk, on the side of the Castle of Alcazar.

  Enter EMPEROR and BENDUCAR.

Emp. And thinkst thou not, it was discovered?

Bend. No: 
The thoughts of kings are like religious groves,
The walks of muffled gods:  Sacred retreat,
Where none, but whom they please to admit, approach.

Emp. Did not my conscious eye flash out a flame, To lighten those brown horrors, and disclose The secret path I trod?

Bend. I could not find it, till you lent a clue To that close labyrinth; how then should they?

Emp. I would be loth they should:  it breeds contempt For herds to listen, or presume to pry, When the hurt lion groans within his den:  But is’t not strange?

Bend. To love? not more than ’tis to live; a tax Imposed on all by nature, paid in kind, Familiar as our being.

Emp. Still ’tis strange
To me:  I know my soul as wild as winds,
That sweep the desarts of our moving plains;
Love might as well be sowed upon our sands,
As in a breast so barren. 
To love an enemy, the only one
Remaining too, whom yester sun beheld
Mustering her charms, and rolling, as she past
By every squadron, her alluring eyes,
To edge her champions’ swords, and urge my ruin. 
The shouts of soldiers, and the burst of cannon,
Maintain even still a deaf and murmuring noise;
Nor is heaven yet recovered of the sound,
Her battle roused:  Yet, spite of me, I love.

Bend. What then controuls you?  Her person is as prostrate as her party.

Emp. A thousand things controul this conqueror: 
My native pride to own the unworthy passion,
Hazard of interest, and my people’s love. 
To what a storm of fate am I exposed!—­
What if I had her murdered!—­’tis but what
My subjects all expect, and she deserves,—­
Would not the impossibility
Of ever, ever seeing, or possessing,
Calm all this rage, this hurricane of soul?