Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney

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СКАЧАТЬ spaniel that gnaws on the chain that ties him, I would sooner mar my teeth than procure liberty.

      “Yet I take the eternal spring of virtue to witness, that I had never read, heard, nor seen anything—I had never any taste of philosophy nor inward feeling in myself—that I did not call upon to help me. But alas, what resistance was there? Before long, I must confess, my very reason was conquered (you will say, corrupted). I thought that reason itself assured me that those who did not honor such beauty had degenerated from their creation.

      “Nothing in truth could hold any plea against my love but the reverend friendship I bore to you. For as it went against my heart to break any way from you, so did I fear, more than any assault, to break it to you. I found (as it is indeed) that to a heart fully resolute, counsel is tedious, but reprehension is loathsome, and there is nothing more terrible to a guilty heart than the eye of a respected friend.

      “This made me determine with myself (thinking it a less fault in friendship to do a thing without your knowledge, than against your will) to take this secret course. This idea was most built up in me the last day of my parting and speaking with you, when upon your speech with me, and my but naming ‘love’ (when else perchance I would have gone further) I saw your countenance and voice so change, as it assured me that revealing my love would only purchase your grief and my encumbrance. And therefore, dear Musidorus, I ran away from your well-known chiding.

      “Having written a letter (which I know not whether you found) and taken my chief jewels with me while you were in the midst of your sport, I found a time unmarked by anyone (as I think) to steal away, I cared not whither, so long as I might escape you. I came to Ithonia in the province of Messenia, where lying secret, I put into practice what I had earlier devised. I remembered by Philanax’s letter and Kalander’s speech how obstinately Basilius was determined not to marry off his daughters. And as I feared that any public dealing should rather increase Philoclea’s captivity than further my love, Love (the refiner of invention) put in my head to disguise myself as an Amazon. Under that mask I might (if it were possible) gain access. And what access could bring forth, I could commit to fortune and industry. Therefore in the most secret manner I could, naming myself Zelmane for that dear lady’s sake to whose memory I am so much bound, I caused this apparel to be made and brought it near the lodges, which are hard at hand. By night I dressed myself, resting till occasion might make me found by them whom I sought. It happened the next morning, as well as my own plot could have laid it.

      “For after I had run over the whole pedigree of my thought, I sang a little ditty, which as you know, I ever delighted in—and especially now, whether it is the nature of this climate to stir up poetical fancies or rather, as I think, it is the nature of love, whose scope of pleasure will not so much as utter his grief but in the form of pleasure.

“But I had sung very little when—as I think, displeased with my bad music—master Dametas came with a hedging bill in his hand, chasing and swearing by the pantoffle of Pallas,14 and such other oaths as his rustic bravery could imagine. When he saw me, I assure you, my beauty was no more beholden to him than my harmony, for, while he leaned his hands on his hedging bill and his chin on his hands, with the voice of one that plays Hercules in a play but never had his fancy in his head, the first word he spoke to me was,

      “ ‘Am not I Dametas? Why, am not I Dametas?’

      “He needed not to name himself, for Kalander’s description had set such a note on him as made him very notable to me, and, therefore, the height of my thoughts would not descend so much as to make him any answer. I continued my inner discourses, but he—perchance witness of his own unworthiness and therefore more apt to think himself slighted—took it in so heinous a manner that he stood on his tiptoes and stared as if he would have had a mote pulled out of his eye.

      “ ‘Why,’ said he, ‘thou woman, or boy—or both, whatever thou be, I tell thee here is no place for thee. Get thee gone! I tell thee it is the prince’s pleasure! I tell thee it is Dametas’ pleasure!’

      “I could not choose but to smile at him, seeing him look so like an ape that had newly taken a purgation, yet pretending I had been caught, I spoke these words to myself:

      “ ‘O spirit,’ said I, ‘of mine, how canst thou receive any mirth in the midst of thy agonies? And thou mirth, how darest thou enter into a mind grown of late thy professed enemy?’

      “ ‘Thy spirit?’ said Dametas. ‘Dost thou think me a spirit? I tell thee I am Basilius’ officer and have charge of him and his daughters.’

      “ ‘O only pearl!’ said I, sobbing, ‘that so vile an oyster should keep thee.’

      “ ‘By the comb case of Diana,’ swore Dametas, ‘this woman is mad. Oysters and pearls? Dost thou think I will buy oysters? I tell thee once again, get thee packing,’ and with that he lifted up his bill to hit me with the blunt end of it.

      “Indeed, that put me quite out of my lesson, so that I forgot Zelmane-ship. I drew out my sword, but the baseness of the villain (who, as Kalander told me, had since his childhood feared the blade of a sword) made me stay my hand. He ran backward with his hands above his head at least twenty paces, gaping and staring with the very grace, I think, of the clowns that by Latona’s prayers were turned into frogs.

“At length staying, finding himself beyond the compass of my blows, he fell to a fresh scolding in such a mannerly15 manner as might well show he had passed through the discipline of a tavern. But seeing me walk up and down without marking what he said, he went his way (as I perceived after) to Basilius.

      “For within a while Basilius came to me, bearing indeed the appearance in his countenance of an honest and well-minded gentleman. With as much courtesy as Dametas showed rudeness, he saluted me:

      “ ‘Fair lady,’ said he, ‘it is nothing strange that such a solitary place as this should receive solitary persons, but much do I marvel how such beauty as yours should be permitted to be thus alone.’

      “I (that now knew it was my part to play) looked with a grave majesty upon him, as if I found in myself cause to be reverenced:

      “ ‘Those who are accompanied by noble thoughts,’ said I, ‘are never alone.’

      “ ‘But in this, your loneliness,’ replied Basilius, ‘those thoughts can neither protect you from suspicion in others nor defend you from melancholy in yourself.’

      “I then showed a dislike that he pressed me so far: ‘I seek no better warrant,’ said I, ‘than my own conscience, nor any greater pleasure than my own contentment.’

      “ ‘Yet virtue seeks to satisfy others,’ said Basilius.

      “ ‘Those that are good,’ said I, ‘will be satisfied as long as they see no evil.’

      “ ‘Yet will the best in this country,’ said Basilius, ‘suspect so excellent a beauty, being so weakly guarded.’

“ ‘Then are the best but stark naught,’16 answered I, ‘for openly suspecting others comes of secretly condemning themselves. But in my country—whose manners I am in all places to maintain and reverence—the general goodness nourished in our hearts makes everyone think others also have the strength of virtue of which we find the assured foundation in ourselves.’

      “ ‘Excellent lady,’ he said, ‘you praise so greatly—and yet so wisely— your country, that I must needs desire to know what the nest is out of which such birds do fly.’

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