The young prince lay in the shadow while his horse cropped at the fresh grass, and he read the _Romance of the Rose_, and as he read it seemed as if he, too, lay there dreaming with the dreamer, and that all the amazing pageant of the tale moved before him as the figures on the woven arras of a great room move, stirred by the wind. For he, like the teller of the tale, seemed to wake from sleep on a May morning and to stray into the meadows to hearken to the matins of the birds. Like the dreamer, he wandered over flower-starred fields beside a river broader and shallower than the Seine till he came to the garden and the castle whose walls were adorned in gold and colors with the hideous images of Hate, Felony, Villany, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Eld, Hypocrisy, and Poverty; and it seemed to him that after he had sated his awed fancy with the study of those strange devices, he, too, sought if by any means he might get into the garden. Then in this waking sleep he found at last a small wicket, and he smote thereon, and the gate was opened to him by a damsel who told him that her name was Idleness, and that she was the friend of the master of the castle and garden, whose name was Mirth, and she gleefully bade him enter, and he obeyed and found himself straightway in so fair a garden that he deemed himself to have arrived at the earthly paradise. His dream spirit, following fast on the dainty heels of Idleness, came to where apple-faced Mirth and his jolly company, fair men and fair women, entertained themselves with song and dance. But while he was with that genial congress and sharing in their sports, the God of Love came over the grass with Sweet-Looking by his side, and Sweet-Looking carried two bows, one crooked and knotty, the other even and comely, and two quivers, each holding five arrows, and the arrows in the quiver in the right hand were Beauty, Simplesse, Franchise, Company, and Fair-Semblance, and those in the left hand were the arrows of Pride, Villany, Shame, Wanhope, and New-Thought. Then the dreamer fled away from these presences, and as he went the God of Love dogged his footsteps with the fair bow and the fair arrow in his hand, and the dreamer came to that clear fountain where Narcissus drowned himself for self-love. In the waters of this fountain the dreamer beheld the reflection of a rose-bush all on fire with roses, and the desire of that rose-bush filled his heart so hotly that he would not have parted with one bud thereof, might he hope to gain so much, for the city of Paris or the city of Pavia. And while he hungered for the rose, the God of Love came up with him and pierced him with the five arrows of Beauty and Simplesse and Franchise and Company and Fair-Semblance, and with each wound he became more and more Love's servant and vassal, and then Love locked his heart with a golden key and left him with but one desire in that shut heart, the desire to obtain the noble rose.