“You must cut off your hair then,” said Lucetta, who thought that at this announcement Julia would immediately abandon her scheme.
“I shall knot it up,” was the disappointing rejoinder.
Lucetta then tried to make the scheme seem foolish to Julia, but Julia had made up her mind and was not to be put off by ridicule; and when her toilet was completed, she looked as comely a page as one could wish to see.
Julia assumed the male name Sebastian, and arrived in Milan in time to hear music being performed outside the Duke's palace.
“They are serenading the Lady Silvia,” said a man to her.
Suddenly she heard a voice lifted in song, and she knew that voice. It was the voice of Proteus. But what was he singing?
“Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her
That she might admired be.”
Julia tried not to hear the rest, but these two lines somehow thundered into her mind--
“Then to Silvia let us sing;
She excels each mortal thing.”
Then Proteus thought Silvia excelled Julia; and, since he sang so beautifully for all the world to hear, it seemed that he was not only false to Julia, but had forgotten her. Yet Julia still loved him. She even went to him, and asked to be his page, and Proteus engaged her.