Happiness produces the same effect on these heroes. Pyrocles-Zelmane when present in his false quality of woman at the bath of his mistress in the Ladon is on the point of swooning with admiration.[203] His friend, Prince Musidorus, in the ecstasies of his passion, falls "downe prostrate," uttering this prayer to the awful god who reigns paramount in Arcady: "O thou, celestiall or infernall spirit of Love, or what other heavenly or hellish title thou list to have (for effects of both I find in my selfe), have compassion of me, and let thy glory be as great in pardoning of them that be submitted to thee as in conquering them that were rebellious."[204] But Sidney painted also amours of another sort, and one of the great attractions of his book is the variety in the descriptions of this passion. Never had the like been seen before in any English novel, and as for France, it must be remembered, that d'Urfe's "Astree," which has kept its place in literature for the very same quality, for its inconstant Hylas and its faithful Celadon, for its Astree and its Madonte, was yet to be written. Sidney has, among several others, created one character which, forgotten as it is now, would be enough to give a permanent interest to this too much neglected romance; it is the Queen Gynecia, who is consumed by a guilty love, and who is the worthy contemporary of the strongly passionate heroes of Marlowe's plays. With her, and for the first time, the dramatic power of English genius leaves the stage and comes to light in the novel; it was destined to pass into it entirely. Gynecia does not allow herself to be blinded by any subterfuge; love has taken possession of her; the rules of the world, the laws of blood, the precepts of virtue that she has observed all her life, are lost sight of; she is conscious of nothing but that she loves, and is ready, like Phaedra of old, to trample everything under foot, to forsake everything, the domestic hearth, child, husband: and it is very interesting to see, about the time of Shakespeare, this purely dramatic character develop itself in a novel.