'Come to yourself, hapless shepherd, arise, and seek a spot where you can by yourself bewail your misfortune, for I think to do the same until life ends.' And saying this he took in his two hands Elicio's head and, putting it off his knees, set it on the ground, without the shepherd being able to return to consciousness; and Erastro, rising, was turning his back to go away, had not Thyrsis and Damon and the other shepherds, kept him from it. Damon went to where Elicio was, and taking him in his arms, made him come to himself. Elicio opened his eyes, and, because he knew all who were there, he took care that his tongue, moved and constrained by grief, should not say anything that might declare the cause of it: and, though this was asked of him by all the shepherds, he never gave any answer save that he knew naught of himself but that, as he was speaking with Erastro, a severe fainting fit had seized him. Erastro said the same, and for this reason the shepherds ceased to ask him further the reason of his affliction, but rather they asked him to return with them to Silerio's hermitage and to let them take him thence to the village or to his hut: but it was not possible for them to prevail with him in this beyond letting him return to the village. Seeing then that this was his desire, they did not wish to oppose it, but rather offered to go with him, but he wished no one's company, nor would he have accepted it, had not his friend Damon's persistence overcome him, and so he had to depart with him, Damon having agreed with Thyrsis to see each other that night in the village or Elicio's hut, in order to arrange to return to theirs. Aurelio and Timbrio asked Erastro for Darinto, and he told them in reply that as soon as Aurelio had left them the fainting fit had seized Elicio, and whilst he was tending to him, Darinto had departed with all haste, and they had seen him no more. Timbrio and those who came with him, seeing then that they did not find Darinto, determined to return to the hermitage and beg Silerio to accept the fair Blanca as his wife; and with this intention they all returned except Erastro, who wished to follow his friend Elicio; and so, taking leave of them, accompanied only by his rebeck, he went away by the same road Elicio had gone. The latter, having gone some distance away with his friend Damon from the rest of the company, with tears in his eyes, and with tokens of the greatest sadness, began to speak to him thus: 'I know well, discreet Damon, that you have so much experience of love's effects that you will not wonder at what I now think to tell you, for they are such that in the reckoning of my judgment I count them and hold them among the most disastrous that are found in love.'