PAR. 'Bless you, my fortunate lady!

HEL. I hope, sir, I have your good will to have mine own good fortunes.*

PAR. You had my prayers to lead them on: and to keep them on, have them still.-O, my knave! how does my old lady?

CLO. So that you had her wrinkles, and I her I would she did as you say.

money,

PAR. Why, I say nothing.

CLO. Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing. To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title; which is within a very little of nothing.

PAR. Away, thou'rt a knave.

CLO. You should have said, sir, before a knave thou'rt a knave; that is, before me thou art a knave: this had been truth, sir.

PAR. Go to, thou art a witty fool, I have found thee.

CLO. Did you find me in yourself, sir? or were you taught to find me? The search, sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find in you, even to the world's pleasure, and the increase of laughter.

PAR. A good knave, i'faith, and well fed.-
Madam, my lord will go away to-night;
A very serious business calls on him.
The great prerogative and rite of love,

Which, as your due, time claims, he does acknowledge;

But puts it off to a compelled restraint;

Whose want, and whose delay, is strewed with

SCENE V.-Another Room in the same.
Enter LAFEU and BERTRAM.

LAF. But, I hope, your lordship thinks not him a soldier.

BER. Yes, my lord, and of very valiant approof.

LAF. You have it from his own deliverance? BER. And by other warranted testimony. LAF. Then my dial goes not true; I took this lark for a bunting.

BER. I do assure you, my lord, he is very great in knowledge, and accordinglyb valiant.

LAF. I have then sinned against his experience, and transgressed against his valour; and my state that way is dangerous, since I cannot yet find in my heart to repent. Here, he comes; I pray you, make us friends, I will pursue the amity.

End ere I do begin.

LAF. A good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner; but one* that lies threethirds, and uses a known truth to pass a thousand nothings with, should be once heard, and thrice beaten.-God save you, captain.

BER. Is there any unkindness between my lord and you, monsieur?

PAR. I know not how I have deserved to run into my lord's displeasure.

LAF. You have made shift to run into 't, boots and spurs and all, like him that leaped into the custard; (5) and out of it you'll run again, rather than suffer question for your residence.

BER. It may be you have mistaken him, my lord. LAF. And shall do so ever, though I took him at his prayers. Fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me, there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes: trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; I have kept of them tame, and know their natures. -Farewell, monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil.

PAR. An idle lord, I swear.
BER. I think so.

[Exit.

sing; mend the ruff, and sing; ask questions, and sing; pick his teeth, and sing: I know a man that had this trick of melancholy, sold* a goodly manor for a song.

COUNT. Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come. [Opening a letter. CLO. I have no mind to Isbel, since I was at court; our old ling† and our Isbels o' the country are nothing like your old ling and your Isbels o' the court: the brains of my Cupid's knocked out; and I begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach.

COUNT. What have we here?
CLO. E'en‡ that you have there.

[Exit.

CLO. O madam, yonder is heavy news within, between two soldiers and my young lady.

COUNT. What is the matter?

CLO. Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your son will not be killed so soon as I thought he would.

COUNT. Why should he be killed?

CLO. So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does the danger is in standing to 't; that's the loss of men, though it be the getting of children. Here they come, will tell you more: for my part, I only hear your son was run away. [Exit Clown.

Enter HELENA and two Gentlemen.

1 GEN. 'Save you, good madam. HEL. Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone. 2 GEN. Do not say so.

COUNT. Think upon patience.-'Pray you, gentlemen,

I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief,

That the first face of neither, on the start, Can woman me unto 't.-Where is my son, I pray you?

2 GEN. Madam, he's gone to serve the duke
of Florence:

We met him thitherward: for thence we came,
And, after some despatch in hand at court,
Thither we bend again.

[passport. HEL. Look on his letter, madam; here's my

[Reads.] When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body, that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a then I write a never.

This is a dreadful sentence.

COUNT. Brought you this letter, gentlemen? 1 GEN. Ay, madam; And, for the contents' sake, are sorry for our pains.

COUNT. I pr'ythee, lady, have a better cheer; If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine, Thou robb'st me of a moiety: he was my son; But I do wash his name out of my blood, [he? And thou art all my child.-Towards Florence is 2 GEN. Ay, madam. COUNT.

And to be a soldier? 2 GEN. Such is his noble purpose: and, believe 't, The duke will lay upon him all the honour That good convenience claims.

COUNT.

Return you thither?

1 GEN. Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of

speed.

HEL. [Reads.] Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.

'Tis bitter.

COUNT. Find you that there?

HEL.

Ay, madam. 1 GEN. 'Tis but the boldness of his hand, haply, which his heart was not consenting to. COUNT. Nothing in France, until he have no wife!

There's nothing here, that is too good for him,
But only she; and she deserves a lord,
That twenty such rude boys might tend upon,
And call her hourly, mistress. Who was with
him?

1 GEN. A servant only, and a gentleman Which I have sometime known.

COUNT. Parolles, was it not? 1 GEN. Ay, my good lady, he. [wickedness. COUNT. A very tainted fellow, and full of My son corrupts a well-derived nature With his inducement.

(*) Old text, hold.

(†) Old text, Lings.

(1) First folio, In.

a The ruff,-] The top of the boot which turned over, and was sometimes ornamented with lace, was called the ruff.