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! [Exeunt, driving in the Swine. Enter MAMMON, the Arch-Priest; and PURGANAX, Chief of the Council of Wizards. PURGANAX. The future looks as black as death, a cloud, MAMMON. Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now? PURGANAX. O, would that this were all! The oracle! MAMMON. Why it was I who spoke that oracle, The oracle itself! PURGANAX. The words went thus: "Boeotia, choose reform or civil war, When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, Riding on the Ionian Minotaur." MAMMON. Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold PURGANAX. You arch-priests Believe in nothing; if you were to dream MAMMON. Yet our tickets Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken ? For prophecies, when once they get abroad, And these dull swine of Thebes boast their de scent From the free Minotaur. You know they still Call themselves bulls, though thus degenerate; And every thing relating to a bull Is popular and respectable in Thebes: Their arms are seven bulls in a field gules; PURGANAX. I have taken good care That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth To agitate lo,* and which Ezekiel † mentions That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains Of utmost Ethiopia, to torment Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee; His crooked tail is barbed with many stings, He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, He has eleven feet with which he crawls, MAMMON. But if Tris Gadfly should drive Iona hither? The Prometheus Bound of Eschylus. † And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Ethiopia and for the bee out of Egypt, &c.—EZEKIEL. PURGANAX. Gods! what an if! but there is my gray rat, And he shall creep into her dressing-room, MAMMON. My dear friend, where are your wits? as if She does not always toast a piece of cheese, And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough To crawl through such chinks PURGANAX. But my leech-a leech Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, His little body like a red balloon, As full of blood as that of hydrogen, Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks And clings and pulls-a horse-leech, whose deep maw The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, MAMMON. This For Queen Iona might suffice, and less; |