In her turn she dreams, she meditates, she argues. She is not yet, like Troilus, love's prisoner; Chaucer does not proceed so fast. She keeps her vision lucid; her imagination and her senses have not yet done their work and reared before her that glittering phantom, ever present, which conceals reality from lovers. She is still mistress of herself enough to discern motives and objections; she discusses and reviews elevated reasons, low reasons, and even some of those practical reasons which will be instantly dismissed, but not without having produced their effect. Let us not make an enemy of this king's son. Besides, can I prevent his loving me? His love has nothing unflattering; is he not the first knight of Troy after Hector? What is there astonishing in his passion for me? If he loves me, shall I be the only one to be loved in Troy? Scarcely, for
Men loven wommen al this toun aboute.
Be they the wers? Why, nay, withouten doute.
Am I not pretty? "I am oon of the fayrest" in all "the toun of Troye," though I should not like people to know that I know it:
Al wolde I that noon wiste of this thought.
After all I am free; "I am myn owene woman"; no husband to say to me "chekmat!" And "par dieux! I am nought religious!" I am not a nun.
But right as whan the sonne shyneth brighte
In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face
And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte
Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space,
A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace,
That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle.[514]
Now she unfolds contradictory arguments supported by considerations equally decisive; she is suffering from that diboulia (alternate will) familiar to lovers who are not yet thoroughly in love. There are two Cressidas in her; the dialogue begun with Pandarus is continued in her heart; the scene of comedy is renewed there in a graver key.
Her decision is not taken; when will it be? At what precise moment does love begin? One scarcely knows; when it has come one fixes the date in the past by hypothesis. We say: it was that day, but when that day was the present day, we said nothing, and knew nothing; a sort of "perhaps" filled the soul, delightful, but still only a perhaps. Cressida is in that obscure period, and the workings within her are shown by the impression which the incidents of daily life produce upon her mind. It seems to her that everything speaks of love, and that fate is in league against her with Pandarus and Troilus: it is but an appearance, the effect of her own imagination, and produced by her state of mind; in reality it happens simply that now the little incidents of life impress her more when they relate to love; the others pass so unperceived that love alone has a place. She might have felt anxious about herself if she had discerned this difference between then and now; but the blindness has commenced, she does not observe that the things appertaining to love find easy access to her heart, and that, where one enters so easily, it is usually that the door is open. She paces in her melancholy mood the gardens of the palace; while she wanders through the shady walks, a young girl sings a song of passion, the words of which stir Cressida to her very soul. Night falls,
And whyte thinges wexen dimme and donne;
the stars begin to light the heavens; Cressida returns pensive; the murmurs of the city die out. Leaning at her window, facing the blue horizon of Troas, with the trees of the garden at her feet, and bathed in the pale glimmers of the night, Cressida dreams, and as she dreams a melody disturbs the silence: hidden in the foliage of a cedar, a nightingale is heard; they too, the birds, celebrate love. And when sleep comes, of what will she think in her dreams if not of love?