Gom. No! the t’other old gentleman in black shall take me if I do; I will speak first!—­Nay, I will, friar, for all your verbum sacerdotis.  I’ll speak truth in few words, and then you may come afterwards and lie by the clock as you use to do.—­For, let me tell you, gentlemen, he shall lie and forswear himself with any friar in all Spain; that’s a bold word now.—­

Dom. Let him alone; let him alone; I shall fetch him back with a circum-bendibus, I warrant him.

Alph. Well, what have you to say against your wife, Gomez?

Gom. Why, I say, in the first place, that I and all men are married for our sins, and that our wives are a judgment; that a batchelor-cobler is a happier man than a prince in wedlock; that we are all visited with a household plague, and, Lord have mercy upon us should be written on all our doors[2].

Dom. Now he reviles marriage, which is one of the seven blessed sacraments.

Gom. ’Tis liker one of the seven deadly sins:  but make your best on’t, I care not; ’tis but binding a man neck and heels, for all that.  But, as for my wife, that crocodile of Nilus, she has wickedly and traitorously conspired the cuckoldom of me, her anointed sovereign lord; and, with the help of the aforesaid friar, whom heaven confound, and with the limbs of one colonel Hernando, cuckold-maker of this city, devilishly contrived to steal herself away, and under her arm feloniously to bear one casket of diamonds, pearls, and other jewels, to the value of 30,000 pistoles.—­Guilty, or not guilty? how sayest thou, culprit?

Dom. False and scandalous!  Give me the book.  I’ll take my corporal oath point-blank against every particular of this charge.

Elv. And so will I.

Dom. As I was walking in the streets, telling my beads, and praying to myself, according to my usual custom, I heard a foul out-cry before Gomez’ portal; and his wife, my penitent, making doleful lamentations:  thereupon, making what haste my limbs would suffer me, that are crippled with often kneeling, I saw him spurning and listing her most unmercifully; whereupon, using Christian arguments with him to desist, he fell violently upon me, without respect to my sacerdotal orders, pushed me from him, and turned me about with a finger and a thumb, just as a man would set up a top.  Mercy! quoth I.—­Damme! quoth he;—­and still continued labouring me, until a good-minded colonel came by, whom, as heaven shall save me, I had never seen before.

Gom. O Lord!  O Lord!

Dom. Ay, and O lady!  O lady too!—­I redouble my oath, I had never seen him.  Well, this noble colonel, like a true gentleman, was for taking the weaker part, you may be sure; whereupon this Gomez flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado upon bastinado, and buffet upon buffet, which the poor meek colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience.