ANALYTIKOS. The soldiers of the King will give you faith. Don't you know that it means death for any man to enter the apartments of the Queen?

PARIS [looking from one to the other]. Oh! So you're a couple of eunuchs.

[Though nearly eighty this is too much for ANALYTIKOS to bear. He rushes to call the guards, but MENELAUS stops him.]

PARIS [to ANALYTIKOS]. Thanks.

ANALYTIKOS. You thank me for telling you your doom?

PARIS. No—for convincing me that I'm where I want to be. It's taken me a long while, but I knew I'd get here. [And then very intimately to MENELAUS.] Where's the Queen?

MENELAUS. Where do you come from?

PARIS. From the hills. I had come down into the market-place to sell my sheep. I had my hood filled with apples. They were golden-red like a thousand sunsets.

MENELAUS [annoyed]. You might skip those bucolic details.

PARIS. At the fair I met three ancient gypsies.