my former dealing.”
And here Pyrocles stayed, as to breathe himself, having been transported with a little vehemence, because it seemed to him Musidorus had over-bitterly glanced against the reputation of womankind. But then quieting his countenance as much his unquiet mind would allow, he thus proceeded: “And poor love,” said he, “dear cousin, is little beholden to you: for you are not contented to spoil it of the honor of the highest power of the mind, which notable men have attributed unto it, but you deject it below all other passions—in truth somewhat strangely, since if love receives any disgrace, it is by the company of these passions you prefer before it. For your bitter objections—for example, that lust, idleness, and a weak heart should be the manner and form (as it were) of love—concern me rather than love, dear Musidorus.
“I am a good witness to my own imperfections and therefore will not defend myself. But herein I must say, you deal contrary to yourself, for if I be so weak, then can you not with reason stir me up as you did, by remembrance of my own virtue. Or if, indeed, I am virtuous, then must you confess that love works in a virtuous heart; and so no doubt it does, whatsoever I be. If we love virtue, in whom shall we love it but in a virtuous creature?
“Let us assume that your meaning is not that I should love the word “virtue” when I see it written in a book. Those troublesome effects you say it breeds are not the faults of love, but of him that loves—as a vessel unable to bear such a liquor; like eyes not able to look on the sun; or like a weak brain, soonest overthrown by the best wine. Even that heavenly love you speak of is accompanied in some hearts with hopes, grief, longings, and despairs.
“And in that heavenly love, there are two parts: the one the love itself, the other the excellence of the thing loved. I, not able at the first leap to frame both in me, do now (like a diligent workman) make ready the chief instrument and first part of that great work, which is love itself. When I have practiced in this manner for a while, then you shall see me turn it to greater matters.
“Thus gently you may (if it please you) think of me. Do not suspect that I will be the more womanish because I wear a woman’s apparel, since I assure you that despite all my apparel there is nothing I desire more than fully to prove myself a man in this enterprise. Much might be said in my defense, much more for love, and most of all for that divine creature who has joined me and love together. But these disputations are fitter for quiet schools than my troubled brains, which are bent rather to perform in deeds than to defend in words the noble desire that possesses me.
“Oh, Lord,” said Musidorus, “how sharp-witted you are to hurt yourself.”
“No,” answered he, “but it is the hurt you speak of that makes me so sharp-witted.”
“Even so,” said Musidorus, “as every base occupation makes one sharp in that practice and foolish in all the rest!”
“No, rather,” answered Pyrocles, “as each excellent thing, once well learned, serves for a measure of all other knowledge.”
“And has that become,” said Musidorus, “a measure for other things, which never received measure in itself?”
“It is counted without measure,” answered Pyrocles, “because the workings of it are without measure, but otherwise, in nature it has measure, since it has an end allotted to it.”
“The beginning being so excellent, I would gladly know the end.”
“Enjoying,” answered Pyrocles, with a deep sigh.
“Oh, now you set forth the baseness of it,” said Musidorus, “since if it ends in enjoying, it shows all the rest was nothing.”
“You mistake me,” answered Pyrocles. “I spoke of the end to which it is directed, which end ends only when our lives do.”
“Alas, let your own brain disenchant you,” said Musidorus.
“My heart is too far possessed,” said Pyrocles.
“But the head gives you direction.”
“And the heart gives me life.”
But Musidorus was so grieved to see his well-beloved friend obstinate, as he thought, to his own destruction, that it forced him with more than accustomed vehemence to speak these words: “Well, well,” said he, “you want to abuse yourself. It was a very white and red virtue, which you picked out of the painterly gloss of her visage. Confess the truth, and you shall find the utmost was only beauty. Although you have as much excellence in beauty as anyone, yet I am sure you make no further reckoning of it than of an outward, fading benefit nature bestowed upon you. And yet, such is your lack of a true grounded virtue (which must be like itself in all points) that what you wisely account a trifle in yourself, you fondly become a slave to in another.
“For my part, I now protest I have left nothing unsaid that my wit could make me know or my entire friendship to you requires of me. I now beseech you, even for the love between us (if this other love has left any in you toward me) and for the remembrance of your old careworn father (if you who forget yourself can remember him) and lastly for Pyrocles’ own sake (who is now upon the point of falling or rising) to purge yourself of this vile infection. Otherwise, give me leave to leave off this name of friendship as an idle title of a thing which cannot be, where virtue is abolished.”
The length of these speeches before had not so much cloyed Pyrocles (though he were very impatient of long deliberations) as this last farewell of the one whom he loved as his own life wounded his soul. For, thinking himself afflicted, he was more apt to conceive unkindness deeply. So that shaking his head and delivering some show of tears, he thus uttered his griefs:
“Alas, Prince Musidorus, how cruelly you deal with me. If you seek the victory, take it, and, if you want, the triumph. You have all the reason in the world. With me remain all the imperfections, yet such as I can no more lay from me than the crow can be persuaded by the swan to cast off all his black feathers. But truly you deal with me like a physician that, upon seeing his patient in a pestilent fever, should chide him (instead of administering help) and bid him be sick no more. Or rather, like a friend who, visiting his friend condemned to perpetual prison and laden with grievous fetters, should will him to shake off his fetters or he would leave him. I am sick, and sick to death. I am a prisoner. Neither is there any redress but by her to whom I am a slave. Now if you wish, leave him that loves you in the highest degree, but remember ever to carry this with you—you abandon your friend in his greatest extremity.”
And herewith the deep wound of his love, being rubbed afresh with this new unkindness, began to bleed (as it were) again in such a way that he was unable to bear it any longer, but gushing out abundance of tears and crossing his arms over his woeful heart, he sunk down to the ground. This sudden trance went so to the heart of Musidorus that, falling down by him and kissing the weeping eyes of his friend, he besought him not to make account of his speech, which if it had been overly-vehement, yet it was to be borne because it came out of a love much more vehement. He had not thought fancy could have received so deep a wound, but now, finding in him the force of it, he would no further oppose it but employ all his service to medicate it however the nature of it required.
But even this kindness made Pyrocles the more melt in the former unkindness, which his manlike tears well showed with a silent look upon Musidorus, as if to say, “And is it possible that Musidorus should threaten to leave me?” This struck Musidorus’ mind and senses dumb too. Unable to say anything for grief, they rested with their eyes placed one upon the other in such a way as might well paint that the true passion of unkindness is never aright except between those that most dearly love. And thus they remained a time until at length, Musidorus embracing him, said:
“And will you thus shake off your friend?”
“It is you that shakes me off,” said Pyrocles, “because my imperfections are unworthy of your friendship.”
“But this,” said Musidorus, “shows you more imperfect—to be cruel to him that submits himself to you. But since you are imperfect,” said he, smiling, “it is reason that you should be governed by us wise and perfect men. And that authority I will begin to take