Enter Lafew. LAFEW. Pardon, my lord [_kneeling_], for me and for my tidings. KING. I’ll fee thee to stand up. LAFEW. Then here’s a man stands that has brought his pardon. I would you had kneel’d, my lord, to ask me mercy, And that at my bidding you could so stand up. KING. I would I had; so I had broke thy pate, And ask’d thee mercy for’t. LAFEW. Good faith, across; But, my good lord, ’tis thus: will you be cur’d Of your infirmity? KING. No. LAFEW. O, will you eat No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will My noble grapes, and if my royal fox Could reach them. I have seen a medicine That’s able to breathe life into a stone, Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary With sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch Is powerful to araise King Pippen, nay, To give great Charlemain a pen in’s hand And write to her a love-line. KING. What ‘her’ is this? LAFEW. Why, doctor ‘she’! My lord, there’s one arriv’d, If you will see her. Now, by my faith and honour, If seriously I may convey my thoughts In this my light deliverance, I have spoke With one that in her sex, her years, profession, Wisdom, and constancy, hath amaz’d me more Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her, For that is her demand, and know her business? That done, laugh well at me. KING. Now, good Lafew, Bring in the admiration; that we with thee May spend our wonder too, or take off thine By wond’ring how thou took’st it. LAFEW. Nay, I’ll fit you, And not be all day neither. [_Exit Lafew._] KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues. Enter Lafew with Helena. LAFEW. Nay, come your ways. KING. This haste hath wings indeed. LAFEW. Nay, come your ways. This is his majesty, say your mind to him. A traitor you do look like, but such traitors His majesty seldom fears; I am Cressid’s uncle, That dare leave two together. Fare you well. [_Exit._] KING. Now, fair one, does your business follow us? HELENA. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was my father, In what he did profess, well found. KING. I knew him. HELENA. The rather will I spare my praises towards him. Knowing him is enough. On his bed of death Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one, Which, as the dearest issue of his practice, And of his old experience the only darling, He bade me store up as a triple eye, Safer than mine own two; more dear I have so, And hearing your high majesty is touch’d With that malignant cause, wherein the honour Of my dear father’s gift stands chief in power, I come to tender it, and my appliance, With all bound humbleness. KING. We thank you, maiden, But may not be so credulous of cure, When our most learned doctors leave us, and The congregated college have concluded That labouring art can never ransom nature From her inaidable estate. I say we must not So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics, or to dissever so Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.