“Then came the bold Sir Caradoc,” carolled Sir John. “Ah, mistress, what news?—And eke Sir Pellinore.—Did I rage last night, Bardolph? Was I a Bedlamite?”
“As mine own bruises can testify,” Bardolph assented. “Had each one of them a tongue, they would raise a clamor beside which Babel were as an heir weeping for his rich uncle’s death; their testimony would qualify you for any madhouse in England. And if their evidence go against the doctor’s stomach, the watchman at the corner hath three teeth—or, rather, hath them no longer, since you knocked them out last night—that will, right willingly, aid him to digest it.”
“Three, say you?” asked the knight, rather stiffly lowering his great body into his great chair set ready for him beside the fire. “I would have my valor in all men’s mouths, but not in this fashion, for it is too biting a jest. Three, say you? Well, I am glad it was no worse; I have a tender conscience, and that mad fellow of the north, Hotspur, sits heavily upon it, so that thus this Percy, being slain by my valor, is per se avenged, a plague on him! Three, say you? I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is; I would I had ’bated my natural inclination somewhat, and had slain less tall fellows by some threescore. I doubt Agamemnon slept not well o’ nights. Three, say you? Give the fellow a crown apiece for his mouldy teeth, if thou hast them; if thou hast them not, bid him eschew this vice of drunkenness, whereby his misfortune hath befallen him, and thus win him heavenly crowns.”
“Indeed, sir,” began Bardolph, “I doubt—”
“Doubt not, sirrah!” cried Sir John, testily; and continued, in a virtuous manner: “Was not the apostle reproved for that same sin? Thou art a Didymus, Bardolph;—an incredulous paynim, a most unspeculative rogue! Have I carracks trading in the Indies? Have I robbed the exchequer of late? Have I the Golden Fleece for a cloak? Nay, it is paltry gimlet, and that augurs badly. Why, does this knavish watchman take me for a raven to feed him in the wilderness? Tell him there are no such ravens hereabout; else had I ravenously limed the housetops and set springes in the gutters. Inform him that my purse is no better lined than his own broken skull: it is void as a beggar’s protestations, or a butcher’s stall in Lent; light as a famished gnat, or the sighing of a new-made widower; more empty than a last year’s bird-nest, than a madman’s eye, or, in fine, than the friendship of a king.”
“But you have wealthy friends, Sir John,” suggested the hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern, whose impatience had but very hardly waited for this opportunity to join in the talk. “Yes, I warrant you, Sir John. Sir John, you have a many wealthy friends; you cannot deny that, Sir John.”
“Friends, dame?” asked the knight, and cowered closer to the fire, as though he were a little cold. “I have no friends since Hal is King. I had, I grant you, a few score of acquaintances whom I taught to play at dice; paltry young blades of the City, very unfledged juvenals! Setting my knighthood and my valor aside, if I did swear friendship with these, I did swear to a lie. But this is a censorious and muddy-minded world, so that, look you, even these sprouting aldermen, these foul bacon-fed rogues, have fled my friendship of late, and my reputation hath grown somewhat more murky than Erebus. No matter! I walk alone, as one that hath the pestilence. No matter! But I grow old; I am not in the vaward of my youth, mistress.”
He nodded his head with extreme gravity; then reached for a cup of sack that Bardolph held at the knight’s elbow.
“Indeed, I know not what your worship will do,” said Mistress Quickly, rather sadly.
“Faith!” answered Sir John, finishing the sack and grinning in a somewhat ghastly fashion; “unless the Providence that watches over the fall of a sparrow hath an eye to the career of Sir John Falstaff, Knight, and so comes to my aid shortly, I must needs convert my last doublet into a mask, and turn highwayman in my shirt. I can take purses yet, ye Uzzite comforters, as gaily as I did at Gadshill, where that scurvy Poins, and he that is now King, and some twoscore other knaves did afterward assault me in the dark; yet I peppered some of them, I warrant you!”
“You must be rid of me, then, master,” Bardolph interpolated. “I for one have no need of a hempen collar.”
“Ah, well!” said the knight, stretching himself in his chair as the warmth of the liquor coursed through his inert blood; “I, too, would be loth to break the gallows’ back! For fear of halters, we must alter our way of living; we must live close, Bardolph, till the wars make us Croesuses or food for crows. And if Hal but hold to his bias, there will be wars: I will eat a piece of my sword, if he have not need of it shortly. Ah, go thy ways, tall Jack; there live not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old. We must live close, Bardolph; we must forswear drinking and wenching! But there is lime in this sack, you rogue; give me another cup.”
The old knight drained this second cup, and unctuously sucked at and licked his lips. Thereafter,
“I pray you, hostess,” he continued, “remember that Doll Tearsheet sups with me tonight; have a capon of the best, and be not sparing of the wine.
