“Yes, your Grace.” “Then yours will do. Kindly lend it to me.” Valentine had talked himself into a trap. He could not refuse to lend his cloak, and when the Duke had donned it, his Grace drew from the pocket a sealed missive addressed to Silvia. He coolly opened it, and read these words: “Silvia, you shall be free to-night.” “Indeed,” he said, “and here's the rope ladder. Prettily contrived, but not perfectly. I give you, sir, a day to leave my dominions. If you are in Milan by this time to-morrow, you die.” Poor Valentine was saddened to the core. “Unless I look on Silvia in the day,” he said, “there is no day for me to look upon.” Before he went he took farewell of Proteus, who proved a hypocrite of the first order. “Hope is a lover's staff,” said Valentine's betrayer; “walk hence with that.” After leaving Milan, Valentine and his servant wandered into a forest near Mantua where the great poet Virgil lived. In the forest, however, the poets (if any) were brigands, who bade the travelers stand. They obeyed, and Valentine made so good an impression upon his captors that they offered him his life on condition that he became their captain. “I accept,” said Valentine, “provided you release my servant, and are not violent to women or the poor.” The reply was worthy of Virgil, and Valentine became a brigand chief. We return now to Julia, who found Verona too dull to live in since Proteus had gone. She begged her maid Lucetta to devise a way by which she could see him. “Better wait for him to return,” said Lucetta, and she talked so sensibly that Julia saw it was idle to hope that Lucetta would bear the blame of any rash and interesting adventure. Julia therefore said that she intended to go to Milan and dressed like a page. “You must cut off your hair then,” said Lucetta, who thought that at this announcement Julia would immediately abandon her scheme. “I shall knot it up,” was the disappointing rejoinder. Lucetta then tried to make the scheme seem foolish to Julia, but Julia had made up her mind and was not to be put off by ridicule; and when her toilet was completed, she looked as comely a page as one could wish to see. Julia assumed the male name Sebastian, and arrived in Milan in time to hear music being performed outside the Duke's palace. “They are serenading the Lady Silvia,” said a man to her. Suddenly she heard a voice lifted in song, and she knew that voice. It was the voice of Proteus. But what was he singing? “Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her That she might admired be.” Julia tried not to hear the rest, but these two lines somehow thundered into her mind-- “Then to Silvia let us sing; She excels each mortal thing.”