Scene VII.

Love for Love

by William Congreve

FORESIGHT, SIR SAMPSON, VALENTINE, JEREMY.

JEREMY
He is here, sir.

VALENTINE
Your blessing, sir.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
You've had it already, sir; I think I
sent it you to-day in a bill of four thousand pound: a great deal of
money, brother Foresight.

FORESIGHT
Ay, indeed, Sir Sampson, a great deal of money for
a young man; I wonder what he can do with it!

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Body o' me, so do I. Hark ye, Valentine,
if there be too much, refund the superfluity; dost hear, boy?

VALENTINE
Superfluity, sir? It will scarce pay my debts. I
hope you will have more indulgence than to oblige me to those hard
conditions which my necessity signed to.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Sir, how, I beseech you, what were you
pleased to intimate, concerning indulgence?

VALENTINE
Why, sir, that you would not go to the extremity
of the conditions, but release me at least from some part.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Oh, sir, I understand you--that's all,
ha?

VALENTINE
Yes, sir, all that I presume to ask. But what
you, out of fatherly fondness, will be pleased to add, shall be
doubly welcome.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
No doubt of it, sweet sir; but your
filial piety, and my fatherly fondness would fit like two tallies.
Here's a rogue, brother Foresight, makes a bargain under hand and
seal in the morning, and would be released from it in the afternoon;
here's a rogue, dog, here's conscience and honesty; this is your wit
now, this is the morality of your wits! You are a wit, and have been
a beau, and may be a--why sirrah, is it not here under hand and
seal-- can you deny it?

VALENTINE
Sir, I don't deny it.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Sirrah, you'll be hanged; I shall live to
see you go up Holborn Hill. Has he not a rogue's face? Speak
brother, you understand physiognomy, a hanging look to me--of all my
boys the most unlike me; he has a damned Tyburn face, without the
benefit o' the clergy.

FORESIGHT
Hum--truly I don't care to discourage a young
man,--he has a violent death in his face; but I hope no danger of
hanging.

VALENTINE
Sir, is this usage for your son?--For that old
weather-headed fool, I know how to laugh at him; but you, sir -

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
You, sir; and you, sir: why, who are
you, sir?

VALENTINE
Your son, sir.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
That's more than I know, sir, and I
believe not.

VALENTINE
Faith, I hope not.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
What, would you have your mother a whore?
Did you ever hear the like? Did you ever hear the like? Body o' me
-

VALENTINE
I would have an excuse for your barbarity and
unnatural usage.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Excuse! Impudence! Why, sirrah, mayn't
I do what I please? Are not you my slave? Did not I beget you? And
might not I have chosen whether I would have begot you or no? 'Oons,
who are you? Whence came you? What brought you into the world? How
came you here, sir? Here, to stand here, upon those two legs, and
look erect with that audacious face, ha? Answer me that! Did you
come a volunteer into the world? Or did I, with the lawful authority
of a parent, press you to the service?

VALENTINE
I know no more why I came than you do why you
called me. But here I am, and if you don't mean to provide for me, I
desire you would leave me as you found me.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
With all my heart: come, uncase, strip,
and go naked out of the world as you came into 't.

VALENTINE
My clothes are soon put off. But you must also
divest me of reason, thought, passions, inclinations, affections,
appetites, senses, and the huge train of attendants that you begot
along with me.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Body o' me, what a manyheaded monster
have I propagated!

VALENTINE
I am of myself, a plain, easy, simple creature,
and to be kept at small expense; but the retinue that you gave me are
craving and invincible; they are so many devils that you have raised,
and will have employment.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
'Oons, what had I to do to get
children,--can't a private man be born without all these followers?
Why, nothing under an emperor should be born with appetites. Why, at
this rate, a fellow that has but a groat in his pocket may have a
stomach capable of a ten shilling ordinary.

JEREMY
Nay, that's as clear as the sun; I'll make oath of it
before any justice in Middlesex.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Here's a cormorant too. 'S'heart this
fellow was not born with you? I did not beget him, did I?

JEREMY
By the provision that's made for me, you might have
begot me too. Nay, and to tell your worship another truth, I believe
you did, for I find I was born with those same whoreson appetites
too, that my master speaks of.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Why, look you there, now. I'll maintain
it, that by the rule of right reason, this fellow ought to have been
born without a palate. 'S'heart, what should he do with a
distinguishing taste? I warrant now he'd rather eat a pheasant, than
a piece of poor John; and smell, now, why I warrant he can smell, and
loves perfumes above a stink. Why there's it; and music, don't you
love music, scoundrel?

JEREMY
Yes; I have a reasonable good ear, sir, as to jigs
and country dances, and the like; I don't much matter your solos or
sonatas, they give me the spleen.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
The spleen, ha, ha, ha; a pox confound
you--solos or sonatas? 'Oons, whose son are you? How were you
engendered, muckworm?

JEREMY
I am by my father, the son of a chair-man; my mother
sold oysters in winter, and cucumbers in summer; and I came upstairs
into the world; for I was born in a cellar.

FORESIGHT
By your looks, you should go upstairs out of the
world too, friend.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
And if this rogue were anatomized now,
and dissected, he has his vessels of digestion and concoction, and so
forth, large enough for the inside of a cardinal, this son of a
cucumber.--These things are unaccountable and unreasonable. Body o'
me, why was not I a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking
their paws? Nature has been provident only to bears and spiders; the
one has its nutriment in his own hands; and t'other spins his
habitation out of his own entrails.

VALENTINE
Fortune was provident enough to supply all the
necessities of my nature, if I had my right of inheritance.

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Again! 'Oons, han't you four thousand
pounds? If I had it again, I would not give thee a groat.--What,
would'st thou have me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own
vitals? S'heart, live by your wits: you were always fond of the
wits, now let's see, if you have wit enough to keep yourself. Your
brother will be in town to-night or to-morrow morning, and then look
you perform covenants, and so your friend and servant: --come,
brother Foresight.