“Madam, if your heart is so pitiless, yet grant me your picture, for the sake of my love. For since you yourself are devoted elsewhere, I am but a shadow, and to your shadow will I give my love.”
“I am very loath to be your idol, sir, but since it suits your falsehood to admire shadows, send to me in the morning, and I will send the picture. And so, good rest!”
“As wretches have overnight who wait for execution in the morning,” said Proteus.
Poor Julia overheard all this conversation between her faithless suitor and the lady Silvia. It was impossible to doubt his falsehood any longer, yet so true and loving was her nature that she could not harden her heart to go away and never see him again. As it happened, Sir Proteus was staying at the very house in Milan where she had found a lodging. His thoughts just then were entirely absorbed with his latest fancy, and it never occurred to him to connect the stranger lad, who called himself Sebastian, with his own lady Julia at Verona. But something about the pretty boy attracted his liking. Proteus’s servant Launce was a silly clown, whose half-witted blunders were always bringing his master into ridicule, and, judging from Sebastian’s face and bearing that he was well-born and trustworthy, Proteus took him into his service as page.
What befell in the Forest
Those were dark days for the lady Silvia: her lover Valentine banished, she herself kept in close imprisonment by her angry and tyrannical father, threatened with marriage to a suitor whom she hated and despised. What prospect of release could she look forward to?
But she was not without courage, and she was not without hope.
At the Court of Milan there was one friend on whom she could rely—the kind Sir Eglamour, a gentleman, valiant, wise, compassionate, well-accomplished; one who had himself known sorrow, for his lady and true love had died, and his heart still mourned her memory.
Silvia told this gentleman that she was anxious to go to Valentine—to Mantua—where she had heard he was staying, and because the ways were dangerous she begged him to accompany her, in whose faith and honour she trusted. Pitying her distress, and knowing that the Duke was acting cruelly in trying to force his daughter into an unworthy marriage, Sir Eglamour willingly agreed, and it was arranged they should start that evening.
Sir Eglamour had scarcely left Silvia, when the messenger arrived from Proteus to claim the portrait which Silvia had promised. And who should Proteus have chosen for this errand but his new young page, Sebastian, whom he little thought was his own dear lady Julia in disguise. Not only this, but he also entrusted a ring to Sebastian to give to Silvia, and this ring was no other than the one which Julia had given to him when they parted, and which he had received with so many protestations of affection and vows of fidelity.