We follow'd therefore, and being led among those
bills, we saw many of both sexes at work in the cells, so much every
of them seem'd to have taken a provocative.
Nor were we sooner discover'd than they wou'd have been at us with the
like impudence, and in a trice one of them, his coat tuck'd under his
girdle, laid hold on Ascyltos, and threw him athwart a couch: I
presently ran to help the undermost, and putting our strengths
together, we made nothing of the troublesome fool. Ascyltos went off,
and flying, left me expos'd to the fury; but, thanks to my strength, I
got off without hurt.
I had almost traverst the city round, when through the dusk I saw Gito
on the beggars-bench of our inn; I made up to him, and going in, ask'd
him, what Ascyltos had got us for dinner? the boy sitting down on the
bed, began to wipe the tears that stood in his eyes; I was much
concern'd at it, and ask'd him the occasion; he was slow in his
answer, and seem'd unwilling; but mixing threats with my intreaties;
"'Twas that brother or comrogue of yours," said he, "that coming ere
while into our lodging, wou'd have been at me, and put hard for it.
When I cry'd out, he drew his sword, and 'if thou art a Lucreece,'
said he, 'thou hast met a Tarquin.'"
I heard him, and shaking my fist at Ascyltos; "What saist thou," said
I, "thou catamite, whose very breath is tainted?"
He dissembled at first a great trembling, but presently throwing my
arms aside, in a higher voice cry'd out: "Must you be prating, thou
ribaldrous cut-throat whom, condemn'd for murdring thine host, nothing
but the fall of the stage could have sav'd? You make a noise, thou
night-pad, who when at thy best hadst never to do with any woman but a
bawd? On what account, think ye, was I the same to you in the aviary,
that the boy here, now is!"
"And who but you," interrupted I, "gave me that slip in the portico?"
"Why what, my Man of Gotham," continu'd he, "must I have done, when I
was dying for hunger? Hear sentence forsooth, that is, the ratling of
broken glasses, and the expounding of dreams? So help me Hercules, as
thou art the greater rogue of the two, who to get a meals meat wert
not asham'd to commend an insipid rhimer.
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