“‘Sir,’ said she, ‘how much I owe you, can be but abased by words,
since the life I have, I hold it now the second time, of you: and
therefore need not offer service unto you, but only to remember you,
that I am your servant: and I would my being so, might any way yield
any small contentment unto you. Now only I can but desire you to
harbour yourself this night in this castle, because the time requires
it, and in truth this country is very dangerous for murdering thieves,
to trust a sleeping life among them. And yet I must confess that as
the love I bear you makes me thus invite you, so the same love makes
me ashamed to bring you to a place where you shall be so, not spoken
by ceremony, but by truth, miserably entertained.’
“With that she told me, that though she spoke of her father, whom she
named Chremes, she would hide no truth from me; which was in sum, that
he was of all that region the man of greatest possessions and riches,
so was he either by nature, or an evil received opinion, given to
sparing in so unmeasurable sort, that he did not only bar himself from
the delightful, but almost from the necessary use thereof, scarcely
allowing himself fit sustenance of life, rather than he would spend of
those goods for whose sake only he seemed to joy in life. Which
extreme dealing, descending from himself upon her, had driven her to
put herself with a great lady of that country, by which occasion she
had stumbled upon such mischances as were little for the honour either
of her, or her family. But so wise had he showed himself therein, as
while he found his daughter maintained without his cost, he was
content to be deaf to any noise of infamy, which though it had wronged
her much more than she deserved, yet she could not deny but she was
driven thereby to receive more than decent favours. She concluded,
that there at least I should be free from injuries, and should be
assured to her-ward to abound as much in the true causes of welcomes,
as I should find wants of the effects thereof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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