In these pastoral times a great number of days were sent to follow their flying predecessors, while the cup of poison (which was deeply tasted of the noble company) had left no sinew of theirs without mortally searching into it; yet never manifesting his venomous work, till once, that the night (parting away angry that she could distil no more sleep into the eyes of lovers) had no sooner given place to the breaking out of the morning light, and the sun bestowed his beams upon the tops of the mountains, but that the woeful Gynecia, to whom rest was no ease, had left her loathed lodging, and gotten herself into the solitary places, those deserts were full of going up and down with such unquiet motions, as a grieved and hopeless mind is wont to bring forth. There appeared unto the eyes of her judgment the evils she was like to run into, with ugly infamy waiting upon them: she felt the terrors of her own conscience; she was guilty of a long exercised virtue, which made his vice the fuller of deformity. The uttermost of the good she could aspire unto was a mortal wound to her vexed spirits: and lastly, no small part of her evils was that she was wise to see her evils. Insomuch, that having a great while thrown her countenance ghastly about her (as if she had called all the powers of the world to be witnesses of her wretched estate) at length casting up her watery eyes to heaven: “O sun,” said she, “whose unspotted light directs the steps of mortal mankind, art thou not ashamed to impart the clearness of thy presence to such a dust-creeping worm as I am? O ye heavens, which continually keep the course allotted unto you, can none of your influences prevail so much upon the miserable Gynecia, as to make her preserve a course so long embraced by her? O deserts, deserts, how fit a guest am I for you, since my heart can people you with wild ravenous beasts, which in you are {122} wanting? O virtue, where dost thou hide thyself? what hideous thing is this which doth eclipse thee? Or is it true that thou wert never but a vain name, and no essential thing, which hast thus left thy professed servant, when she had most need of thy lovely presence? O imperfect proportion of reason which can too much foresee and too little prevent?” “Alas! alas!” said she, “if there were but one hope for all my pains, or but one excuse for all my faultiness! But wretch that I am, my torment is beyond all succour, and my evil deserving doth exceed my evil fortune. For nothing else did my husband take this strange resolution to live so solitary: for nothing else have the winds delivered this strange guest to my country: for nothing else have the destinies reserved my life to this time, but that only I, most wretched I, should become a plague to myself and a shame to womankind. Yet if my desire, how unjust soever it be, might take effect, though a thousand deaths followed it, and every death were followed with a thousand shames, yet