[Enter Mammon.]

MAMMON: I wonder that gray wizards Like you should be so beardless in their schemes; It had been but a point of policy To keep Iona and the Swine apart. Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction Between two parties who will govern you But for my art.—Behold this BAG! it is The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge, On which our spies skulked in ovation through The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: A bane so much the deadlier fills it now As calumny is worse than death,—for here The Gadfly’s venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;— All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil’s Lord High Chancellor, And over it the Primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism:—‘Be thou called The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. Let all baptized by thy infernal dew Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch! No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Court Journal or legitimate Review!— Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover Of other wives and husbands than their own— The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps! Wither they to a ghastly caricature Of what was human!—let not man or beast Behold their face with unaverted eyes! Or hear their names with ears that tingle not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!’— This is a perilous liquor;—good my Lords.— [SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG.] Beware! for God’s sake, beware!-if you should break The seal, and touch the fatal liquor—

NOTE: _373 or edition 1820; nor edition 1839.

PURGANAX: There, Give it to me. I have been used to handle All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty Only desires to see the colour of it.

MAMMON: Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test of guilt or innocence. And that, if she be guilty, ‘twill transform her To manifest deformity like guilt. If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is; And they will see her flying through the air, So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. I’ll wager you will see them Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties, With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another’s ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o’ the gab, Make them a solemn speech to this effect: I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the uglification of the Queen.

DAKRY (TO SWELLFOOT): I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, Humbly remind your Majesty that the care Of your high office, as Man-milliner To red Bellona, should not be deferred.

PURGANAX: All part, in happier plight to meet again.