Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/44

32 the form of a woman before. He began then to feel in his rural understanding (whereunto never till now, either by painful instruction or any good means used to him, any honest civility had power of impression) a strange kind of humour to awake, which informed his gross and dull spirit that this damsel was the very fairest which any living man beheld.

Then he began to distinguish her parts, commending the tresses of her hair, which he imagined to be of gold, her forehead, nose, mouth, neck, arms, but, above all, her breasts, appearing as yet but only to show themselves like two little mountains. So that from being a rustic clownish lout he would needs now become a judge of beauty, coveting earnestly in his soul to see her eyes, which were veiled over with sound sleep that kept them fast enclosed together; and only to look on them he wished a thousand times that she would awake, for in his judgment she excelled all the women that ever he had seen, and doubted whether she were some goddess or no; so strangely was he metamorphosed from folly to a sensible apprehension, more than common. And so far did this sudden knowledge in him extend that he could conceive of divine and celestial things, and that they were more to be admired and reverenced than those of human or terrene consideration; wherefore the more gladly he contented himself to tarry till she awaked of her own accord. And although the time of stay seemed tedious to him, yet notwithstanding, he was overcome with such extraordinary contentment as he had no power to depart thence, but stood as if he had been glued to the ground.

After some indifferent respite of time, it chanced that