Bassanio unlocked the leaden casket, and there he found the portrait of the lady Portia, with her golden hair and her eyes smiling back at him in greeting. With the picture was a scroll, on which was written: “You that choose not by the view, Chance as fair and choose as true! Since this fortune falls to you, Be content and seek no new. If you be well pleased with this, And hold your fortune for your bliss, Turn you where your lady is And claim her with a loving kiss.” “A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave I come by note to give and to receive,” said Bassanio, following the advice of the scroll. He was almost dazed at his own good fortune, and scarcely dared to believe it could be true until it was confirmed and ratified by the lady herself. But Portia left him no doubt on that point, and her love and joy overflowed in a generous surrender of herself and all her possessions to her new-found “lord, her governor, her king.” “This house, these servants, and myself are yours, my lord,” she ended. “I give them with this ring, which when you part from, lose, or give away, let it foretell the ruin of your love.” Bassanio declared he had no words in which to answer; there was nothing but a wild sense of joy. And as for the ring, he would never part with it as long as he lived. The happiness resulting from Bassanio’s choice of the right casket did not end with themselves, for now another couple stepped forward, and craved permission to be married at the same time as the lord and the lady. One of Bassanio’s companions had come with him to Belmont, a gay, feather-brained young fellow called Gratiano. This lively chatterer had fixed his affections on Nerissa, the waiting-woman, and their fate, too, hung on the caskets, for Nerissa promised that if Bassanio succeeded in winning her mistress, _she_ would consent to marry Gratiano. Nerissa, further, in imitation of Portia, gave her own wooer a ring; and Gratiano, like Bassanio, swore that he would never part with it. “Revenge!” Meanwhile, in Venice, things were not going well, either for Shylock or for Antonio. The three months for which Antonio had borrowed the money had almost expired, when a dreadful blow fell on the Jew. Jessica, his only child, fled with a Christian. Not only this, but she carried off with her rich plunder of money and jewels, stolen from her father’s hoards. Shylock was almost out of his mind with rage and grief, and from his frenzied ravings it was difficult to say which loss he felt the most--that of his ducats or his daughter. Jessica, in her heedless extravagance, squandered money right and left, and even a precious turquoise ring which her mother had given to Shylock before their marriage was not held sacred--Jessica bartered it at Genoa to a sailor in exchange for a monkey!