Mal. Thou hast deserved me, And I am thine, dear devil:  what do we next?

Mel. I said, first seize the king.

Mal. Suppose it done:  He’s clapt within a convent, shorn a saint, My master mounts the throne.

Mel. Not so fast, Malicorn; Thy master mounts not, till the king be slain.

Mal. Not when deposed?

Mel. He cannot be deposed:  He may be killed, a violent fate attends him; But at his birth there shone a regal star.

Mal. My master had a stronger.

Mel. No, not a stronger, but more popular. 
Their births were full opposed, the Guise now strongest
But if the ill influence pass o’er Harry’s head,
As in a year it will, France ne’er shall boast
A greater king than he; now cut him off,
While yet his stars are weak.

Mal. Thou talk’st of stars:  Can’st thou not see more deep into events, And by a surer way?

Mel. No, Malicorn;
The ways of heaven are broken since our fall,
Gulph beyond gulph, and never to be shot. 
Once we could read our mighty Maker’s mind,
As in a crystal mirror, see the ideas
Of things that always are, as he is always;
Now, shut below in this dark sphere,
By second causes dimly we may guess,
And peep far off on heaven’s revolving orbs,
Which cast obscure reflections from the throne.

Mal. Then tell me thy surmises of the future.

Mel. I took the revolution of the year,
Just when the Sun was entering in the Ham: 
The ascending Scorpion poisoned all the sky,
A sign of deep deceit and treachery. 
Full on his cusp his angry master sate,
Conjoined with Saturn, baleful both to man: 
Of secret slaughters, empires overturned,
Strife, blood, and massacres, expect to hear,
And all the events of an ill-omened year.

Mal. Then flourish hell, and mighty mischief reign! 
Mischief, to some, to others must be good. 
But hark! for now, though ’tis the dead of night,
When silence broods upon our darkened world,
Methinks I hear a murmuring hollow sound,
Like the deaf chimes of bells in steeples touched.

Mel. It is truly guessed;
But know, ’tis from no nightly sexton’s hand. 
There’s not a damned ghost, nor hell-born fiend,
That can from limbo ’scape, but hither flies;
With leathern wings they beat the dusky skies,
To sacred churches all in swarms repair;
Some crowd the spires, but most the hallowed bells, }
And softly toll for souls departing knells:  }
Each chime, thou hear’st, a future death foretells, }
Now there they perch to have them in their eyes,
’Till all go loaded to the nether skies[15].

Mal. To-morrow then.

Mel. To-morrow let it be; Or thou deceiv’st those hungry, gaping fiends, And Beelzebub will rage.