HELENA. That you may well perceive I have not wrong’d you One of the greatest in the Christian world Shall be my surety; fore whose throne ’tis needful, Ere I can perfect mine intents, to kneel. Time was I did him a desired office, Dear almost as his life; which gratitude Through flinty Tartar’s bosom would peep forth, And answer thanks. I duly am inform’d His grace is at Marseilles; to which place We have convenient convoy. You must know I am supposed dead. The army breaking, My husband hies him home, where, heaven aiding, And by the leave of my good lord the king, We’ll be before our welcome. WIDOW. Gentle madam, You never had a servant to whose trust Your business was more welcome. HELENA. Nor you, mistress, Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour To recompense your love. Doubt not but heaven Hath brought me up to be your daughter’s dower, As it hath fated her to be my motive And helper to a husband. But, O strange men! That can such sweet use make of what they hate, When saucy trusting of the cozen’d thoughts Defiles the pitchy night; so lust doth play With what it loathes, for that which is away. But more of this hereafter. You, Diana, Under my poor instructions yet must suffer Something in my behalf. DIANA. Let death and honesty Go with your impositions, I am yours Upon your will to suffer. HELENA. Yet, I pray you; But with the word the time will bring on summer, When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, And be as sweet as sharp. We must away; Our waggon is prepar’d, and time revives us. All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown. Whate’er the course, the end is the renown. [_Exeunt._] SCENE V. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace. Enter Clown, Countess and Lafew. LAFEW. No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbak’d and doughy youth of a nation in his colour. Your daughter-in-law had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more advanc’d by the king than by that red-tail’d humble-bee I speak of. COUNTESS. I would I had not known him; it was the death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating. If she had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother, I could not have owed her a more rooted love. LAFEW. ’Twas a good lady, ’twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb. CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or, rather, the herb of grace. LAFEW. They are not herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs. CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in grass. LAFEW. Whether dost thou profess thyself,—a knave or a fool? CLOWN. A fool, sir, at a woman’s service, and a knave at a man’s. LAFEW. Your distinction? CLOWN. I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service. LAFEW. So you were a knave at his service indeed. CLOWN. And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service.