Help me, oh gentle Love, uplift and guide My feeble spirit in the doubtful hour, To soul and faltering tongue, whate'er betide, Send in the long-expected moment power, That shall be strong, with boldness at its side, To make that easy which was hard before, And bravely dash upon fate and misfortune, Until it shall attain to greatest fortune. 'It resulted from my being so transported in my endless imaginings that I did not take heed to sing these verses I have repeated, in a voice as low as I ought, nor was the place where I was so secret as to prevent their being listened to by Timbrio; and when he heard them, it came into his mind that mine was not free from love, and that if I felt any, it was for Nisida, as could be gathered from my song; and though he discovered the true state of my thoughts, he did not discover that of my wishes, but rather understanding them to be contrary to what I did think, he decided to depart that very night and go to where he might be found by nobody, only to leave me the opportunity of alone serving Nisida. All this I learnt from a page of his, who was acquainted with all his secrets, who came to me in great distress and said to me: "Help, Señor Silerio, for Timbrio, my master and your friend, wishes to leave us and go away this night. He has not told me where, but only that I should get for him I do not know how much money, and that I should tell no one he is going, especially telling me not to tell you: and this thought came to him after he had been listening to some verse or other you were singing just now. To judge from the excessive grief I have seen him display, I think he is on the verge of despair; and as it seems to me that I ought rather to assist in his cure than to obey his command, I come to tell it to you, as to one who can intervene to prevent him putting into practice so fatal a purpose." With strange dread I listened to what the page told me, and went straightway to see Timbrio in his apartment, and, before I went in, I stopped to see what he was doing. He was stretched on his bed, face downwards, shedding countless tears accompanied by deep sighs, and with a low voice and broken words, it seemed to me that he was saying this: "Seek, my true friend Silerio, to win the fruit your solicitude and toil has well deserved, and do not seek, by what you think you owe to friendship for me, to fail to gratify your desire, for I will restrain mine, though it be with the extreme means of death; for, since you freed me from it, when with such love and fortitude you offered yourself to the fierceness of a thousand swords, it is not much that I should now repay you in part for so good a deed by giving you the opportunity to enjoy her in whom Heaven summed up all its beauty, and love set all my happiness, without the hindrance my presence can cause you. One thing