Page:Tales from Shakspeare (1831).djvu/204

 cheer the sad mind of Helena, and she said, "Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone." She then read these words out of Bertram's letter: When you can get the ring from my finger which never shall come off, then call me husband, but in such a Then I write a Never. " This is a dreadful sentence!" said Helena. The countess begged her to have patience, and said, now Bertram was gone, she should be her child, and that she deserved a lord that twenty such rude boys as Bertram might tend upon, and hourly call her mistress. But in vain by respectful condescension and kind flattery this matchless mother tried to soothe the sorrows of her daughter-in-law. Helena still kept her eyes fixed upon the letter, and cried out in an agony of grief, Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France. The countess asked her if she found those words in the letter?" Yes, madam," was all poor Helena could answer.

The next morning Helena was missing. She left a letter to be delivered to the countess after she was gone, to acquaint her with the reason of her sudden absence: in this letter she informed her, that she was so much grieved at having driven Bertram from his native country and his home, that to atone for her offence, she had undertaken a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Jaques le Grand, and concluded with requesting the countess to inform her son, that the wife he so hated had left his house for ever.

Bertram, when he left Paris, went to Florence, and there became an officer in the duke of Florence's army, and after a successful war, in which he