VOLPONE. [_Enter_] VOLTORE.
_Volt._ Outstript thus, by a parasite! a slave,
Would run on errands, and make legs for crumbs!
Well, what I’ll do——
_Volp._ The court stays for your worship.
I e’en rejoice, sir, at your worship’s happiness,
And that it fell into so learned hands, 5
That understand the fing’ring——
_Volt._ What do you mean?
_Volp._ I mean to be a suitor to your worship,
For the small tenement, out of reparations,[1732]
That, at the end of your long row of houses,
By the Piscaria: it was, in Volpone’s time, 10
Your predecessor, ere he grew diseas’d,
A handsome, pretty, custom’d[1733] hawdy-house
As any was in Venice, none disprais’d;
But fell with him: his body and that house
Decay’d together.
_Volt._ Come, sir, leave your prating. 15
_Volp._ Why, if your worship give me but your hand
That I may ha’ the refusal, I have done.
’T is a mere toy to you, sir; candle-rents;
As your learn’d worship knows——
_Volt._ What do I know?
_Volp._ Marry, no end of your wealth, sir; God decrease it! 20
_Volt._ Mistaking knave! what, mock’st thou my misfortune? [_Exit._]
_Volt._ His blessing on your heart, sir; would ’t were more!——
Now to my first again, at the next corner. [_Exit._]