With this disposition, and in this frame of mind, he approaches his niece to speak to her of love. The scene, which is entirely of Chaucer's invention, is a true comedy scene; the gestures and attitudes are minutely noted. Cressida looks down; Pandarus coughs. The dialogue is so rapid and sharp that one might think this part written for a play, not for a tale in verse. The uncle arrives; the niece, seated with a book on her knees, was reading a romance. Ah! you were reading! What book was it? "What seith it? Tel it us. Is it of Love?" It was of Thebes; "this romaunce is of Thebes;" she had secured as it seems a very early copy. She excuses herself for indulging in so frivolous a pastime; she would perhaps do better to read "on holy seyntes lyves." Chaucer, mindful above all of the analysis of passions, does not trouble himself about anachronisms; he cares nothing to know if the besieged Trojans could really have drawn examples of virtue from the Lives of the Saints; history matters little to him: let those who take an interest in it look "in Omer or in Dares."[512] The motions of the human heart, that is his real subject, not the march of armies; from the moment of its birth, the English novel is psychological. With a thousand precautions, and although still keeping to the vulgarity of his role, Pandarus manages so as to bring to a sufficiently serious mood the laughter-loving Cressida; he contrives that she shall praise Troilus herself, incidentally, before he has even named him. With his frivolities he mingles serious things, wise and practical advice like a good uncle, the better to inspire confidence; then he rises to depart without having yet said what brought him. Cressida's interest is excited at once, the more so that reticence is not habitual to Pandarus; her curiosity, irritated from line to line, becomes anxiety, almost anguish, for though Cressida be of the fourteenth century, and the first of a long line of heroines of romance, with her appears already the nervous woman. She starts at the least thing, she is the most impressionable of beings, "the ferfullest wight that might be"; even the state of the atmosphere affects her. What is then the matter? Oh! only this: ... the kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Do what yow list.[513] The conversation continues, more and more crafty on the part of Pandarus; his friend asks for so little: look less unkindly upon him, and it will be enough.