Excellently sound advice. Nowhere is attention ostentatiously called to him; we are never allowed to feel that he is being dragged in by way of comic relief; but his mere presence at once removes _Troilus and Criseyde_ from the category of conventional love-romances, and the very fact that we are left to discover his significance for ourselves, without comment or explanation shows Chaucer's confidence in his craftmanship. But skilfully as Pandarus is drawn, the character of Cressida shows even greater subtlety of treatment. To the medieval mind faithlessness in love was the one unforgivable crime. Nearly a hundred years after Chaucer wrote his _Troilus and Criseyde_, Sir Thomas Malory tells us of Guenever, "she was a good lover and therefore she made a good end," and again and again in the medieval romances proper we find the same thought insisted on. Chaucer had therefore no light task before him when he set out to draw a heroine at once lovable and fickle, and to enlist the sympathies of his readers on behalf of one whose name had become a by-word for faithlessness in love. With consummate skill he insists from the outset on her gentleness and timidity. When Pandarus declares that the deaths both of Troilus and himself will lie at her door if she turns a deaf ear to his pleading, Cressida is simple enough to believe that he means it, and ... wel neigh starf for fere,[77] So as she was the ferfulleste wight[78] That might be.... That she is no vulgar coquette is shown by her ignorance of Troilus's passion. Apparently he spends his whole time in the temple gazing at her, but there is no mistaking the sincerity of her unselfconsciousness and surprise when Pandarus tells her of her lover's plight. Nor is she at first altogether pleased at having one of the handsomest and bravest of Priam's sons at her feet; indeed Chaucer is at some pains to explain that she does not suffer herself to be lightly won:-- For I sey nought that she so sodeynly Yaf him hir love, but that she gan enclyne To lyk him first, and I have told you why; And after that, his manhood and his pyne[79] Made love with-inne hir for to myne,[80] For which, by process and by good servyse He gat hir love, and in no sodyn wyse. Altogether we get the impression of a simple, child-like being who wanders happily about her garden with Flexippe and Tharbe and Antigone "and othere of hir wommen," or sits poring over tales of chivalry, without a thought of marriage. She is woman enough to feel the force of Pandarus's hint that it is folly to live ... alle proude Til crowes feet be growe under your yë, and to like the thought that the hero who rides blushing through the cheering crowd ... is he Which that myn uncle swereth he most be deed But I on him have mercy and pitee,