'If you had yours, discreet Lenio,' replied Thyrsis, 'without the shadows of the idle opinion which fills them, you would straightway see the brightness of ours, and that they deserve more glory and praise for being loving, than for any subtlety or discretion they might contain.'
'No more, Thyrsis, no more,' replied Lenio, 'for I know well that with such great and such obstinate foes my reasonings will have little force.'
'If they had force,' answered Elicio, 'those who are here are such friends of truth, that not even in jest would they contradict it, and herein you can see, Lenio, how far you go from it, since there is no one to approve your words, or even to hold your intentions good.'
'Then in faith,' said Lenio, 'may your intentions not save you, oh Elicio, but let the air tell it, which you ever increase with sighs, and the grass of these meadows which grows with your tears, and the verses you sang the other day and wrote on the beeches of this wood, for in them will be seen what it is you praise in yourself and blame in me.'
Lenio would not have remained without a reply, had they not seen coming to where they were the fair Galatea, with the discreet shepherdesses Florisa and Teolinda, who, not to be recognised by Damon and Thyrsis, had placed a white veil before her fair face. They came and were received by the shepherds with joyous welcome, especially by the lovers Elicio and Erastro, who felt such strange content at the sight of Galatea, that Erastro, being unable to conceal it, in token thereof, without any one asking it of him, beckoned to Elicio to play his pipe, to the sound of which, with joyous and sweet accents, he sang the following verses:
ERASTRO.
Let me but the fair eyes see
Of the sun I am beholding;
If they go, their light withholding,