“But the grief of that, finding a body already brought to the last
degree of weakness, so overwhelmed the little remnant of the spirits
left in Daiphantus, that she fell suddenly into deadly swoonings;
never coming to herself, but that withal she returned to make most
pitiful lamentations; most strange unto us, because we were far from
guessing the ground thereof. But finding her sickness such as began to
print death in her eyes, we made all haste possible to convey her to
the next town: but before we could lay her on a bed, both we, and she
might find in herself, that the harbingers of over-hasty death had
prepared his lodging in that dainty body, which she undoubtedly
feeling, with a weak cheerfulness showed comfort therein, and then
desiring us both to come near her, and that nobody else might be
present; with pale, and yet, even in paleness, lovely lips: ‘Now or
never, and never indeed but now it is time for me,’ said she, ‘to
speak: and I thank death which gives me leave to discover that, the
suppressing whereof perchance hath been the sharpest spur that hath
hasted my race to this end. Know then my lords, and especially you my
lord and master Pyrocles, that your page Daiphantus is the unfortunate
Zelmane, who for your sake caused my, as unfortunate, lover and cousin
Palladius, to leave his father’s court, and consequently, both him and
my aunt, his mother, to lose their lives. For your sake myself have
become, of a princess, a page, and for your sake have put off the
apparel of a woman, and, if you judge not more mercifully, the
modesty.’ We were amazed at her speech, and then had, as it were, new
eyes given us to perceive that which before had been a present
stranger to our minds: for indeed forthwith we knew it to be the face
of Zelmane, whom before we had known in the court of Iberia. And
sorrow and pity laying her pain upon me, I comforted her the best I
could by the tenderness of goodwill, pretending indeed better hope
than I had of her recovery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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