‘In spite of all this sorrow, yet will I never of my love repent,
But joy that for his sake I suffered prisonment.’
Then she gave yet more pitiful sobs, for she was very sad and cold and hungry. Yet always she would say again, between her sobs, ‘I will never love any man but Marinell.’
Now Marinell had never in all his life truly loved any one. But when he heard Florimell’s piteous voice, and knew how she loved him, and how much she had suffered for his sake, his heart, that had been so hard, grew soft.
‘Poor little maid,’ he said to himself, ‘poor, beautiful little Florimell.’
No sooner had he begun to love Florimell, than he began to think of a plan by which to save her from the bad old shepherd.
At first, he thought he would ask the shepherd to let her go. But he knew that that would be no good. Then he thought that he would fight with the shepherd, and win her in that way. But that plan he also gave up. ‘I will break into her prison, and steal her away,’ he thought next. But he had no boat, and the sea flowed all round the rock, so that it was not possible.
While he still thought and planned, the marriage-feast came to an end, and Marinell had to go home with his mother. He looked so miserable that no one would have taken him for a wedding-guest.
Each day that passed after the wedding found him looking more and more sad. He could not eat nor sleep for thinking of Florimell, shut up in a dreary dungeon from which he could not free her. For want of sleep and food, and because he was so unhappy, Marinell grew ill. He was so weak that he could not rise, and his mother, Cymoënt, was greatly distressed.
‘The wound he got from Britomart cannot be rightly healed,’ she said. So she sent for the wise doctor of the seas.
‘The old wound is quite whole,’ said the doctor. ‘This is a new pain which I cannot understand.’