words would be injurious to your ears, which would express the manner of her suit: while yet many times earnestness dyed her cheeks with the colour of shamefacedness, and wanton languishing borrowed of her eyes the down-cast look of modesty. But we in the meantime far from loving her, and often assuring her that we would not so recompense her husband’s saving of our lives; to such a ridiculous degree of trusting her, she had brought him, that she caused him to send us word, that upon our lives we should do whatsoever she commanded us: good man not knowing any other but that all her pleasures were directed to the preservation of his estate. But when that made us rather pity than obey his folly, then fell she to servile entreating us, as though force could have been the school of love, or that an honest courage would not rather strive against, than yield to injury. All which yet could not make us accuse her, though it made us almost pine away for spite to lose any of our time in so troublesome an idleness. “But while we were thus full of weariness of what was past, and doubt of what was to follow, love, that I think in the course of my life hath a sport sometimes to poison me with roses, sometimes to heal me with wormwood, brought forth a remedy unto us: which though it helped me out of that distress, alas, the conclusion was such that I must ever while I live think it worse than a wreck so to have been preserved. This king by his queen had a son of tender age, but of great expectation, brought up in the hope of themselves, and already acceptation of the inconstant people, as successor of his father’s crown, whereof he was as worthy, considering his parts, as unworthy in respect of the wrong was thereby done against the most noble Plangus, whose great deserts now either forgotten, or ungratefully remembered; all men set their sails with the favourable wind, which blew on the fortune of this young prince, perchance not in their hearts, but surely in their mouths, now giving Plangus, {231} who some years before was their only champion, the poor comfort of calamity, pity. This youth therefore accounted prince of that region, by name Palladius, did with vehement affection love a young lady brought up in his father’s court, called Zelmane, daughter to that mischievously unhappy prince Plexirtus, of whom already I have, and sometimes must make, but never honourable mention, left there by her father, because of the intricate changeableness of his estate, he, by the mother’s side, being half brother to this queen Andromana, and therefore the willinger committing her to her care. But as love, alas! doth not always reflect itself, so fell it out that this Zelmane, though truly reason there was enough to love Palladius, yet could not ever persuade her heart to yield thereunto: with that pain to Palladius, as they feel that feel an unloved love. Yet loving indeed, and therefore constant, he used still the intercession of diligence and faith, ever