Page 3124 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have
Prompted you in the ebb of your estate
And your great flow of debts. My lov’d lord,
Though you hear now, too late, yet now’s a time: [145]

The greatest of your having lacks a half
To pay your present debts.

TIMON
Let all my land be sold.

STEWARD
’Tis all engag’d, some forfeited and gone,
And what remains will hardly stop the mouth

Of present dues. The future comes apace. [150]
What shall defend the interim, and at length
How goes our reck’ning?

TIMON
To Lacedæmon did my land extend.

STEWARD
O my good lord, the world is but a word:

Were it all yours, to give it in a breath, [155]
How quickly were it gone!

TIMON
You tell me true.

STEWARD
If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood,
Call me before th’ exactest auditors,

And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me,
When all our offices have been oppress’d [160]
With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept
With drunken spilth of wine, when every room

Hath blaz’d with lights and bray’d with minstrelsy,
I have retir’d me to a wasteful cock