Pyrocles easily perceived she was content with kindness to put off
occasion of further kindness, wherein love showed himself a cowardly
boy that durst not attend for fear of offending. But rather love
proved himself valiant, that durst with the sword of reverent duty
gain-stand the force of so many enraged desires. But so it was, that
though he knew this discourse was to entertain him from a more
straight parley, yet he durst not but kiss his rod, and gladly make
much of that entertainment which she allotted unto him: and therefore
with a desirous sigh chastening his breast for too much desiring,
“Sweet princess of my life,” said he, “what trophies, what triumph,
what monuments, what histories might ever make my fame yield so sweet
a music to my ears, as that it pleaseth you to lend your mind to the
knowledge of any thing touching Pyrocles, only therefore of value,
because he is your Pyrocles? and therefore grow I now so proud as to
think it worth the hearing, since you vouchsafe to give it the
hearing. Therefore only height of my hope, vouchsafe to know, that
after the death of Tiridates, and settling Erona in her government,
for {216} settled we left her; howsoever since, as I perceived by your
speech the last day, the ungrateful treason of her ill-chosen husband
overthrew her, a thing, in truth, never till this time by me either
heard, or suspected: for who could think, without having such a mind
as Antiphilus, that so great a beauty as Erona’s, indeed excellent,
could not have held his affection? so great goodness could not have
bound gratefulness? and so high advancement could not have satisfied
his ambition? but therefore true it is, that wickedness may well be
compared to a bottomless pit, into which it is far easier to keep
one’s self from falling than being fallen, to give one’s self any stay
from falling infinitely. But for my cousin and me, upon this cause we
parted from Erona.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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