After long absence, such is yours: most welcome! Be sprightly, for you fall 'mongst friends. 'Mongst friends, If brothers. Would it had been so, that they Had been my father's sons! then had my prize Been less, and so more equal ballasting To thee, Posthumus. He wrings at some distress. Would I could free't! Or I, whate'er it be, What pain it cost, what danger. God's! Hark, boys. Great men, That had a court no bigger than this cave, That did attend themselves and had the virtue Which their own conscience seal'd them--laying by That nothing-gift of differing multitudes-- Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods! I'd change my sex to be companion with them, Since Leonatus's false. It shall be so. Boys, we'll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in: Discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp'd, We'll mannerly demand thee of thy story, So far as thou wilt speak it. Pray, draw near. The night to the owl and morn to the lark less welcome. Thanks, sir. I pray, draw near. This is the tenor of the emperor's writ: That since the common men are now in action 'Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians, And that the legions now in Gallia are Full weak to undertake our wars against The fall'n-off Britons, that we do incite The gentry to this business. He creates Lucius preconsul: and to you the tribunes, For this immediate levy, he commends His absolute commission. Long live Caesar! Is Lucius general of the forces? Ay. Remaining now in Gallia? With those legions Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy Must be supplyant: the words of your commission Will tie you to the numbers and the time Of their dispatch. We will discharge our duty. I am near to the place where they should meet, if Pisanio have mapped it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too? the rather--saving reverence of the word--for 'tis said a woman's fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the workman. I dare speak it to myself--for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber--I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions: yet this