King. Now, fair one, does your business follow

us?

Hel. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was My father; in what he did profess, well found. King. I knew him.

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,1

Safer than mine own two, more dear. I have so:
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.
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 inaidable estate,-I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady

We thank you, maiden;

To empirics; 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 grateful. Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I 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.

1 A third eye.

Hel. What I can do, can do no hurt to try,
Since you set up your rest1 'gainst remedy.
He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister;
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes.

flown

Great floods have

From simple sources; and great seas have dried, When miracles have by the greatest been denied.— 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. Inspired merit so by breath is barred.
It is not so with him that all things knows,
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us, when
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; 3

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;

1 i. e. "Since you have determined or made up your mind that there is no remedy."

2 An allusion to Daniel judging the two elders.

3 I am not an impostor, that proclaim one thing and design another, that proclaim a cure and aim at a fraud. I think what I speak.

4 í. e. the divine grace, lending me grace or power to accomplish it.

Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass;

sound your

parts

What is infirm from
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 divulged shame,-
Traduced by odious ballads; my maiden's name
Seared otherwise; ne worse of worst extended,
With vilest torture let my life be ended.1

King. Methinks in thee some blessed 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, virtue, 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 well deserved. Not helping, death's my fee;
But, if I help, what do you promise me?

King. Make thy demand.

Hel.

But will you make it even? King. Ay, by my sceptre, and my hopes of help.3 Hel. Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly hand, What husband in thy power I will command.

1 Let me be stigmatized as a strumpet, and, in addition (although that could not be worse, or a more extended evil than what I have mentioned, the loss of my honor, which is the worst that could happen), let me die with torture. Ne is nor.

2 Property seems to be used here for performance or achievement, singular as it may seem.

3 Thirlby proposes to read hopes of heaven.

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 impage of thy state;1
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, but rest
Unquestioned welcome, and undoubted blessed.—
Give me some help here, ho!—If thou proceed
As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE II. Rousillon. A Room in the Countess's

Palace.

Enter Countess and Clown.

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

Clo. I will show 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, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and, indeed, such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for

1 The old copy reads "image of thy state." Warburton proposed impage, which Steevens rejects, saying, unadvisedly, "there is no such word." It is evident that Shakspeare formed it from "an impe, a scion, or young slip of a tree."

the court: but, for me, I have an answer will serve

all men.

Count. Marry, that's a bountiful answer, that fits all questions.

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 questions? 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 fore-finger,' 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 off; —more, more, a hundred of them.

Count. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you. Clo. O Lord, sir.-Thick, thick, spare not me. Count. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.

Clo. O Lord, sir.-Nay, put me to't, I warrant you.

1 The rush ring seems to have been a kind of love token, for plighting of troth among rustic lovers.

2 A ridicule on this silly expletive of speech, then in vogue at court. Thus Clove and Orange, in Every Man in his Humor: "You conceive me, sir?-O Lord, sir!