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That goldsmith there, were he not pack’d with her,

Could witness it, for he was with me then,

Who parted with me to go fetch a chain,

Promising to bring it to the Porpentine,

Where Balthazar and I did dine together.

Our dinner done, and he not coming thither,

I went to seek him. In the street I met him,

And in his company that gentleman.

There did this perjur’d goldsmith swear me down

That I this day of him receiv’d the chain,

Which, God he knows, I saw not; for the which

He did arrest me with an officer.

I did obey, and sent my peasant home

For certain ducats; he with none return’d.

Then fairly I bespoke the officer

To go in person with me to my house.

By th’ way we met

My wife, her sister, and a rabble more

Of vild confederates. Along with them

They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,

A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch,

A living dead man. This pernicious slave,

Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,