and many a deep river, till she came to an aunt’s house of hers, and came and cried to her for help: and she for pity gave her a nut, and bid her never open her nut till she was come to the extremest misery that ever tongue could speak of; and so she went, and she went, and never rested the evening, where she went in the morning, till she came to a second aunt, and she gave her another nut.” “Now good Mopsa,” said the sweet Philoclea, “I pray thee at my request keep this tale till my marriage-day, and I promise thee that the best gown I wear that day shall be thine.” Mopsa was very glad of that bargain, especially that it should grow a festival tale: so that Zelmane, who desired to find the uttermost what these ladies understood touching herself, and having understood the danger of Erona, of which before she had never heard, purposing with herself, as soon as this pursuit she now was in was brought to any effect, to succour her, entreated again, that she might know as well the story of Plangus, as of Erona. Philoclea referred it to {200} her sister’s perfecter remembrance, who with so sweet a voice, and so winning a grace, as in themselves were of most forcible eloquence to procure attention, in this manner to their earnest request soon condescended. “The father of this prince Plangus as yet lives, and is king of Iberia: a man, if the judgment of Plangus may be accepted, of no wicked nature, nor willingly doing evil, without himself mistake the evil, seeing it disguised under some form of goodness. This prince being married at the first to a princess, who both from her ancestors, and in herself was worthy of him, by her had this son Plangus. Not long after whose birth, the queen, as though she had performed the message for which she was sent into the world, returned again unto her maker. The king, sealing up all thoughts of love under the image of her memory, remained a widower many years after; recompensing the grief of that disjoining from her, in conjoining in himself both a fatherly and motherly care toward her only child Plangus, who being grown to man’s age, as our own eyes may judge, could not but fertilely requite his father’s fatherly education.