One day, in the temple, he sees Cressida, and his fate is sealed; he cannot remove his gaze from her; the wind of love has swept by; all his strength has vanished; his pride has fallen as the petals fall from a rose; he drinks deep draughts of an invincible poison. Far from her, his imagination completes what reality had begun: seated on the foot of his bed, absorbed in thought, he once more sees Cressida, and sees her so beautiful, depicted in outlines so vivid, and colours so glowing, that this divine image fashioned in his own brain is henceforth the only one he will behold; forever will he have before his eyes that celestial form of superhuman beauty, never more the real earthly Cressida, the frail daughter of Calchas. Troilus is ill for life of the love illness.
He has a friend, older than himself, sceptical, trivial, experienced, "that called was Pandare," Cressida's uncle. He confides to him his woes, and asks for help. Pandarus, in Boccaccio, is a young nobleman, sceptical too, but frivolous, disdainful, elegant, like a personage of Musset. Chaucer transforms the whole drama and makes room for the grosser realities of life, by altering the character of Pandarus. He makes of him a man of mature years devoid of scruples, talkative, shameless, wily, whose wisdom consists in proverbs chosen among the easiest to follow, much more closely connected with Molière's or Shakespeare's comic heroes than with Musset's lovers. Pandarus is as fond of comparisons as Gros-René, as fond of old saws as Polonius; he is coarse and indecent, unintentionally and by nature, like Juliet's nurse.[511] He is totally unconscious, and thinks himself the best friend in the world, and the most reserved; he concludes interminable speeches by:
I jape nought, as ever have I joye.
Every one of his thoughts, of his words, of his attitudes is the very opposite of Cressida's and her lover's, and makes them stand out in relief by a contrast of shade. He is all for tangible and present realities, and does not believe in ever foregoing an immediate and certain pleasure in consideration of merely possible consequences.
With this disposition, and in this frame of mind, he approaches his niece to speak to her of love. The scene, which is entirely of Chaucer's invention, is a true comedy scene; the gestures and attitudes are minutely noted. Cressida looks down; Pandarus coughs. The dialogue is so rapid and sharp that one might think this part written for a play, not for a tale in verse. The uncle arrives; the niece, seated with a book on her knees, was reading a romance.
Ah! you were reading! What book was it? "What seith it? Tel it us. Is it of Love?" It was of Thebes; "this romaunce is of Thebes;" she had secured as it seems a very early copy. She excuses herself for indulging in so frivolous a pastime; she would perhaps do better to read "on holy seyntes lyves." Chaucer, mindful above all of the analysis of passions, does not trouble himself about anachronisms; he cares nothing to know if the besieged Trojans could really have drawn examples of virtue from the Lives of the Saints; history matters little to him: let those who take an interest in it look "in Omer or in Dares."[512] The motions of the human heart, that is his real subject, not the march of armies; from the moment of its birth, the English novel is psychological.
With a thousand precautions, and although still keeping to the vulgarity of his rôle, Pandarus manages so as to bring to a sufficiently serious mood the laughter-loving Cressida; he contrives that she shall praise Troilus herself, incidentally, before he has even named him. With his frivolities he mingles serious things, wise and practical advice like a good uncle, the better to inspire confidence; then he rises to depart without having yet said what brought him. Cressida's interest is excited at once, the more so that reticence is not habitual to Pandarus; her curiosity, irritated from line to line, becomes anxiety, almost anguish, for though Cressida be of the fourteenth century, and the first of a long line of heroines of romance, with her appears already the nervous woman. She starts at the least thing, she is the most impressionable of beings, "the ferfullest wight that might be"; even the state of the atmosphere affects her. What is then the matter? Oh! only this:
... the kinges dere sone,
The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free,
Which alwey for to do wel is his wone,
The noble Troilus, so loveth thee,
That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be.
Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye?
Do what yow list.[513]
The conversation continues, more and more crafty on the part of Pandarus; his friend asks for so little: look less unkindly upon him, and it will be enough.
But here appears Chaucer's art in all its subtilty. The wiles of Pandarus, carried as far as his character will allow, might have sufficed to make a Cressida of romance yield; but it would have been too easy play for the master already sure of his powers. He makes Pandarus say a word too much; Cressida unmasks him on the spot, obliges him to acknowledge that in asking less he desired more for his friend, and now she is blushing and indignant. Chaucer does not want her to yield to disquisitions and descriptions; all the cleverness of Pandarus is there only to make us better appreciate the slow inward working that is going on in Cressida's heart; her uncle will have sufficed to stir her; that is all, and, truth to say, that is something. She feels for Troilus no clearly defined sentiment, but her curiosity is aroused. And just then, while the conversation is still going on, loud shouts are heard, the crowd rushes, balconies are filled, strains of music burst forth; 'tis the return, after a victorious sally, of one of the heroes who defend Troy. This hero is Troilus, and in the midst of this triumphal scene, the pretty, frail, laughing, tender-hearted Cressida beholds for the first time her royal lover.