PORTIA. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree; such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word “choose”! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none? NERISSA. Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations. Therefore the lott’ry that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver, and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come? PORTIA. I pray thee over-name them, and as thou namest them, I will describe them, and according to my description level at my affection. NERISSA. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. PORTIA. Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother play’d false with a smith. NERISSA. Then is there the County Palatine. PORTIA. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say “And you will not have me, choose.” He hears merry tales and smiles not. I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death’s-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two! NERISSA. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon? PORTIA. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine. He is every man in no man. If a throstle sing, he falls straight a-cap’ring. He will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me, I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him. NERISSA. What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of England?