finding it improbable to remove that let to her glories, she grew very melancholy, which was soon perceived by the too amorous Prince, who pleads, and sighs, and weeps on her bosom day and night to find the cause: but she, who found she had a difficult game to play, and that she had need of all her little aids, pretends a thousand little frivolous reasons before she discovers the true one; which served but to oblige him to ask anew, as she designed he should----At last, one morning, finding him in the softest fit in the world, and ready to give her whatever she could ask in return for the secret of her disquiet, she told him with a sigh, how unhappy she was in loving so violently a man who could never be any thing to her more than the robber of her honour: and at last, with abundance of sighs and tears, bewailed his marriage----He taking her with all the joy imaginable in his arms, thanked her for speaking of the only thing he had a thousand times been going to offer to her, but durst not for fear she should reproach him. He told her he looked upon himself as married to no woman but herself, to whom by a thousand solemn vows he had contracted himself, and that he would never own any other while he lived, let fortune do what she pleased with him. _Hermione_, thriving hitherto so well, urged his easy heart yet farther, and told him, though she had left no doubt remaining in her of his love and virtue, no suspicion of his vows, yet the world would still esteem the Princess his wife, and herself only as a prostitute to his youthful pleasure; and as she conceived her birth and fortune not to be much inferior to that of the Princess, she should die with indignation and shame, to bear all the reproach of his wantonness, while his now wife would live esteemed and pitied as an injured innocent. To all which he replied, as mad in love, that the Princess, he confessed, was a lady to whom he had obligations, but that he esteemed her no more his wife, since he was married to her at the age of twelve years; an age, wherein he was not capacitated to choose good or evil, or to answer for himself, or his inclinations: and though she were a lady of absolute virtue, of youth, wit and beauty; yet fate had so ordained it, that he had reserved his heart to this moment entirely for herself; and that he renounced all pretenders to him except herself; that he had now possessed the Princess for the space of twenty years; that youth had a long race to run, and could not take up at those years with one single beauty: that hitherto ravage and destruction of hearts had been his province and glory, and that he thought he never lost time but when he was a little while constant: but now he was fixed to all he would ever possess whilst he had breath; and that she was both his mistress and his wife; his eternal happiness, and the end of all his loving. It is there he said he would remain as in his first state of innocence: that hitherto