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Artemidorus

Here will I stand till Caesar pass along,
And as a suitor will I give him this.
My heart laments that virtue cannot live
Out of the teeth of emulation.
If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live;
If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.
[Exit.]
[Thunder and lightning. Enter Casca and Cicero.]

Cicero

Good even, Casca.  Brought you Caesar home?
Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?

Casca

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th'ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds:
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

Casca

Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!

Cassius

A very pleasing night to honest men.

Casca

Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

Cassius

Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walked about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And thus unbracèd, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;
And when the cross blue lightning seemed to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.

Cassius

A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Casca

'Tis Caesar that you mean.  Is it not, Cassius?

Cassius

Let it be who it is. For Romans now
Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors,
But — woe the while! — our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits.
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

Casca

Indeed, they say the senators tomorrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king,
And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,
In every place save here in Italy.

Cassius

Now know you, Casca, I have moved already
Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans
To undergo with me an enterprise
Of honorable-dangerous consequence;
And I do know, by this they stay for me
In Pompey's Porch, For now, this fearful night,
There is no stir or walking in the streets;
And the complexion of the element
In favor's like the work we have in hand —
Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

Cinna

O Cassius, if you could
But win the noble Brutus to our party —

Cassius

Be you content.  Good Cinna, take this paper,
And look you lay it in the praetor's chair,
Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this
In at his window.  Set this up with wax
Upon old Brutus' statue.  All this done,
Repair to Pompey's porch where you shall find us.
[Enter Claudius alone]

Claudius

I have sent to seek him and to find the body. 
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose;
Yet, must not we put the strong law on him.
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weighed,
But ne'er the offense. To bear all smooth and even, 
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved
Or not at all.    

Claudius   

Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?

Hamlet

At supper.

Claudius   

At supper? Where?

Hamlet

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain 
convocation of worms are e'en at him. Your worm
is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to    
fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and
your lean beggar is but variable service to dishes but
to one table. That's the end.

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