“Well, you have comforted me marvellous much,” said Juliet, speaking with strange calm. “Go in, and tell my lady that, having displeased my father, I have gone to Friar Laurence’s cell to make confession and to be absolved.” “Marry I will, and this is wisely done,” said the old nurse, pottering away to fulfil her errand. Then, for a moment, Juliet’s self-restraint gave way. “Oh, most wicked fiend!” she cried, in just indignation. “Is it more sin to wish me to be thus forsworn, or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue with which she has praised him as above compare so many thousand times! Go, counsellor; thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I will go to the Friar to ask his remedy. If everything else fail, I have power myself to die.” The good Friar did not fail the young girl in her need, as the old nurse had done. But the way of escape he suggested was such a terrible one that none but the bravest and most faithful heart could ever have consented to it. Juliet’s position, however, was so desperate, and she was so determined to be true to Romeo, that she would have died rather than have married Paris; and now she declared she was ready to go down to the gates of death itself if only she might live a true wife to Romeo. Seeing her resolution, Friar Laurence went on to describe his plan. The marriage was to take place two days hence, on the Thursday. On the Wednesday night Juliet, when she went to bed, was to drink off the contents of a phial, which the Friar would give her. This was a very strong sleeping draught, which would make her lie exactly like dead, pale as ashes, stiff and cold, for forty-two hours, after which she would awaken as if from a pleasant sleep. On the Thursday morning, when they came to rouse her for the marriage, they would find her apparently dead, and then--according to the custom of the country--in her best robes, uncovered on the bier, she would be borne to the ancient vault of the Capulets. In the meantime, before she awoke, news would be sent to Romeo to tell him everything. He would come back to Verona, and he and Friar Laurence would watch beside Juliet in the vault until she awoke, and that very same night Romeo should convey her away to Mantua. This was the desperate plan which the Friar suggested, and which Juliet’s love for her husband gave her strength to accept and carry out. With unflinching courage she seized the little phial, while Friar Laurence went immediately to despatch a speedy messenger to Mantua with letters to Romeo.