Hel. You are my mother, madam :-'would you Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;

(So that

were

my lord your son were not my brother) Indeed my mother!- or were you both our mothers,

I care no more for than I do for heaven,
So I were not his sister. Can't be other
But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?
Count. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-
in-law:

-:

Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun, that looks upon his worshiper,

But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
Let not your hate encounter with my love,

God shield you mean it not! "daughter," and For loving where you do: but if yourself,

"mother,"

So strive upon your pulse

What, pale again?

My fear hath catched your fondness: now I see
The mystery of your loneliness, and find

Whose agéd honor cites a virtuous youth,
Did ever, in so true a flame of liking,
Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and love,- O then, give pity

Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 't is gross, To her whose state is such that cannot choose

You love my son: invention is ashamed,

Against the proclamation of thy passion,
To say thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
But tell me then, 't is so: for look, thy cheeks
Confess it, th' one to th' other; and thine eyes
See it so grossly shewn in thy behaviors,
That in their kind they speak it: only sin
And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,
That truth should be suspected. Speak, is 't so?
If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue;
If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,
To tell me truly.

Hel.
Count. Do

Hel.

Good madam, pardon me!

you

love

my son?

Your pardon, noble mistress!

Count. Love you my son?

You know my father left me some prescriptions
Of rare and proved effects, such as his reading
And manifest experience had collected
For general sovereignty; and that he willed me
In heedfullest reservation to bestow them,
As notes, whose faculties inclusive were
More than they were in note: amongst the rest
There is a remedy, approved, set down,

Count. Go not about: my love hath in 't a To cure the desperate languishings whereof

Hel. My lord your son made me to think of Shall, for my legacy, be sanctified

Flourish. Enter KING, with young Lords, taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and Attendants.

The bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek,

That fame may cry you loud. I say, farewell. 2nd Lord. Health, at your bidding, serve your

majesty!

King. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them: They say our French lack language to deny,

King. Farewell, young lord; these warlike prin- If they demand. Beware of being captives

That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords: "Too young," and "the next year," and "'tis

Whether I live or die, be you the sons

Of worthy Frenchmen. Let higher Italy
(Those 'bated, that inherit but the fall

Of the last monarchy) see that you come
Not to woo honor, but to wed it: when

too early."

Par. An thy mind stand to it, boy, steal away

bravely.

Ber. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,

Ber. I grow to you, and our parting is a tor- My royal fox could reach them. I have seen a

Par. Mars dote on you for his novices! [Exeunt If you will see her, - now by my faith and Lords.]-What will you do?

Bring in the admiration; that we with thee
May spend our wonder too, or take off thine,

Par. Worthy fellows, and like to prove most By wondering how thou took'st it. sinewy swordsmen.

[Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES. And not be all day neither.

I would you had kneeled, my lord, to ask me A traitor you do look like; but such traitors

Hel. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was When miracles have by the greatest been denied.

Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards
him:

Knowing him is enough. On his bed of death
Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,
Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,

And of his old experience the only darling,

He bade me store up, as a triple eye,

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.

King. I must not hear thee: fare thee well,

kind maid:

Thy pains, not used, must by thyself be paid:
Proffers not took, reap thanks for their reward.

Hel. Inspiréd merit so by breath is barred!
It is not so with Him that all things knows,
As 't is with us, that square our guess by shows:

Safer than mine own two; more dear. I have so: But most it is presumption in us, when

And, hearing your high majesty is touched
With that malignant cause wherein the honor
Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,

I come to tender it, and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness.

King.

We thank you, maiden:
But may not be so credulous of cure.
When our most learned doctors leave us, and
The congregated college have concluded
That laboring art can never ransom nature
From her unaidible estate,-I say, we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empires; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
Hel. My duty, then, shall pay me for my
pains :

I will no more enforce mine office on you;
Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
A modest one to bear me back again.

King. I cannot give thee less, to be called grate

ful:

The help of heaven we count the act of men.
Dear sir, to my endeavors give consent:
Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor, that proclaim

Myself against the level of mine aim;

But know I think, and think I know most sure,
My art is not past power, nor you past cure.
King. Art thou so confident?—Within what |
space

Hop'st thou my cure?

Hel. The greatest Grace lending grace,
Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;
Ere twice in murk and occidental damp
Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp;
Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.
King. Upon thy certainty and confidence,
What dar'st thou venture?

Hel. Tax of impudence;
A strumpet's boldness, a divulgéd shame;

Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I Traduced by odious ballads; my maiden's name

give

As one near death to those that wish him live:
But what at full I know, thou know'st no part;
I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

Hel. What I can do can do no hurt to try,
Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy.
He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister:
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shewn,
When judges have been babes. Great floods have
flown

From simple sources; and great seas have dried,

Seared otherwise no worse of worst extended,
With vilest torture let my life be ended.

King. Methinks in thee some blesséd spirit doth

speak;

His powerful sound within an organ weak:
And what impossibility would slay

In common sense, sense saves another way.
Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate
Worth name of life, in thee hath estimate:
Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all
That happiness and prime can happy call.
Thou this to hazard, needs must intimate

Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate.
Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try;
That ministers thine own death if I die.

Hel. If I break time, or flinch in property Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die;

and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the court:- but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.

Count. Marry, that's a bountiful answer that

And well deserved. Not helping, death 's my fee: fits all questions.
But if I help, what do you promise me?

King. Make thy demand.

Hel.

But will you make it even?

King. Ay, by my scepter and my hopes of heaven.

Hel. Then thou shalt give me, with thy kingly
hand,

What husband in thy power I will command:
Exempted be from me the arrogance

:

To choose from forth the royal blood of France;
My low and humble name to propagate
With any branch or image of thy state:
But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know
Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

King. Here is my hand: the premises observed,
Thy will by my performance shall be served.
So make the choice of thy own time; for I,
Thy resolved patient, on thee still rely.
More should I question thee, and more I must;
Though more to know could not be more to trust :
From whence thou cam'st, how tended on;-

rest

but

Unquestioned welcome, and undoubted blest.—
Give me some help here, ho!-If thou proceed
As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.
[Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE II.-Roussillon. A Room in the COUNT

ESS's Palace.

Enter COUNTESS and Clown.

Clo. It is like a barber's chair, that fits all buttocks the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock.

Count. Will your answer serve fit to all ques

tions?

Clo. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun's lip to the friar's mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.

Count. Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for all questions?

Clo. From below your duke, to beneath your constable, it will fit any question.

Count. It must be an answer of most monstrous size, that must fit all demands.

Clo. But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should speak truth of it: here it is, and all that belongs to 't: Ask me, if I am a courtier; it shall do you no harm to learn.

Count. To be young again, if we could, I will be a fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier ? Clo. O Lord, sir!-There's a simple putting :- - more, more, a hundred of them. Count. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.

off:

Clo. O Lord, sir!-Thick, thick, spare not me.
Count. I think, sir, you can eat none of this

Count. Come on, sir: I shall now put you to homely meat. the height of your breeding.

Clo. I will shew myself highly fed, and lowly taught: I know my business is but to the court.

Count. To the court! why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? "But to the court!"

Clo. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make a leg, put off's cap. kiss his hand,

Clo. O Lord, sir! - Nay, put me to 't; I war

rant you.

Count. You were lately whipped, sir, as I think.
Clo. O Lord, sir!-Spare not me.

Count. Do you cry-"O Lord, sir," at your whipping, and "Spare not me?" Indeed, your "O Lord, sir," is very sequent to your whipping: you would answer very well to a whipping, if you were but bound to 't.