Is she not a serpent?
gold-crested, all the world may see; and with a mortal bite, I know.

I have had the bite before the kisses.

That is rather an unjust reversal of the order of things.
Apropos, Hamlet was poisoned--ghost-poisoned.' 'Mad, he was mad!' said Clotilde, recovering and smiling.
'He was born bilious; he partook of the father's constitution, not the mother's.

High-thoughted, quick-nerved to follow the thought, reflective, if an interval yawned between his hand and the act, he was by nature two-minded: as full of conscience as a nursing mother that sleeps beside her infant:--she hears the silent beginning of a cry.
Before the ghost walked he was an elementary hero; one puff of action would have whiffed away his melancholy.

After it, he was a dizzy moralizer, waiting for the winds to blow him to his deed-ox out.