GUARD: 
Your sacred Majesty.

SWELLFOOT: 
Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman,
Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah 70
The hog-butcher.

GUARD: 
They are in waiting, Sire.

[ENTER SOLOMON, MOSES, AND ZEPHANIAH.]

SWELLFOOT: 
Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows
[THE PIGS RUN ABOUT IN CONSTERNATION.]
That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep. 
Moral restraint I see has no effect,
Nor prostitution, nor our own example, 75
Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison—­
This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy—­
Cut close and deep, good Moses.

MOSES: 
Let your Majesty
Keep the Boars quiet, else—­

SWELLFOOT: 
Zephaniah, cut 80
That fat Hog’s throat, the brute seems overfed;
Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.

ZEPHANIAH: 
Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;—­
We shall find pints of hydatids in ’s liver,
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat 85
Upon his carious ribs—­

SWELLFOOT: 
’Tis all the same,
He’ll serve instead of riot money, when
Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes’ streets
And January winds, after a day
Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. 90
Now, Solomon, I’ll sell you in a lump
The whole kit of them.

SOLOMON: 
Why, your Majesty,
I could not give—­

SWELLFOOT: 
Kill them out of the way,
That shall be price enough, and let me hear
Their everlasting grunts and whines no more! 95

[EXEUNT, DRIVING IN THE SWINE. 
ENTER MAMM0N, THE ARCH-PRIEST,
AND PURGANAX, CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS.]

PURGANAX: 
The future looks as black as death, a cloud,
Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it—­
The troops grow mutinous—­the revenue fails—­
There’s something rotten in us—­for the level 100
Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,
The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!

MAMMON: 
Why what’s the matter, my dear fellow, now? 
Do the troops mutiny?—­decimate some regiments;
Does money fail?—­come to my mint—­coin paper,
Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed 105
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

PURGANAX: 
Oh, would that this were all!  The oracle!!

MAMMON: 
Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, 110
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!