and on seeing him in the state in which he was, they knew full well the grief he was suffering; and, being moved to compassion, they determined all to go and console him, as they would have done, had not Elicio begged them to let him go alone, for he thought that, as Mireno was so great a friend of his, he would impart his grief to him more freely than to another. The shepherds consented to it, and Elicio, going there, found Mireno so beside himself and so transported in his grief that he neither recognised him nor spoke to him a word. Elicio, seeing this, beckoned to the other shepherds to come, and they, fearing that some strange accident had befallen Mireno, since Elicio called them with haste, straightway went there, and saw Mireno with eyes so fixed on the ground, and so motionless that he seemed a statue, seeing that he did not awake from his strange trance with the coming of Elicio nor with that of Thyrsis, Damon and Erastro, except that after a long while he began to say as it were between his teeth: 'Are you Silveria, Silveria? if you are, I am not Mireno, and if I am not Mireno, you are not Silveria, for it is not possible for Silveria to be without Mireno, or Mireno without Silveria. Then who am I, hapless one? or who are you, ungrateful one? Full well I know that I am not Mireno, for you have not wished to be Silveria, at least the Silveria you ought to have been and I thought you were.' At this moment he raised his eyes, and as he saw the four shepherds round him and recognised Elicio among them, he arose and without ceasing his bitter plaint, threw his arms round his neck, saying to him: 'Ah, my true friend, now indeed you will have no cause to envy my state, as you envied it when you saw me favoured by Silveria; for, if you called me happy then, you can call me hapless now, and change all the glad names you gave me then, into the grievous ones you now can give me. I indeed will be able to call you happy, Elicio, since you are more consoled by the hope you have of being loved than afflicted by the real fear of being forgotten.' 'You make me perplexed, oh Mireno,' answered Elicio, 'to see the extreme grief you display at what Silveria has done, when you know that she has parents whom it was right to have obeyed.' 'If she felt love,' replied Mireno, 'duty to parents were small hindrance to keep her from fulfilling what she owed to love. Whence I come to think, oh Elicio, that if she loved me well, she did ill to marry, and if the love she used to show me was feigned, she did worse in deceiving me and in offering to undeceive me at a time when it cannot avail me save by leaving my life in her hands.'