There the princesses determining to bathe themselves, though it was so privileged a place, upon pain of death, as nobody durst presume to come hither; yet for the more surety, they looked round about, and could see nothing but a water-spaniel, who came down the river, showing that he hunted for a duck, and with a snuffling grace, disdaining that his smelling force could not as well prevail through the water as through the air; and therefore waiting with his eye to see whether he could espy the ducks getting up again, but then a little below them failing of his purpose, he got out of the river, and shaking off the water (as great men do their friends) now he had no further cause to use it, inweeded himself so that the ladies lost the further marking his sportfulness: and inviting Zelmane also to wash herself with them, and she excusing {179} herself with having taken a late cold, they began by piecemeal to take away the eclipsing of their apparel. Zelmane would have put to her helping hand, but she was taken with such a quivering, that she thought it more wisdom to lean herself to a tree, and look on, while Miso and Mopsa, like a couple of foreswat melters, were getting the pure silver of their bodies out of the ure of their garments. But as the raiments went off to receive kisses of the ground, Zelmane envied the happiness of all, but of the smock was even jealous, and when that was taken away too, and that Philoclea remained, for her Zelmane only marked, like a diamond taken from out of the rock, or rather like the sun getting from under a cloud, and showing his naked beams to the full view, then was the beauty too much for a patient sight, the delight too strong for a stayed conceit, so that Zelmane could not choose but run, to touch, embrace and kiss her. But conscience made her come to herself, and leave Philoclea, who blushing, and withal smiling, making shamefacedness pleasant, and pleasure shamefaced, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, till the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars. But the river itself gave way unto her, so that she was straight breast high, which was the deepest that thereabout she could be: and when cold Ladon had once fully embraced them, himself was no more so cold to those ladies, but as if his cold complexion had been heated with love, so seemed he to play about every part he could touch.