My noble grapes, and if my royal fox
Could reach them. I have seen a medicine
That's able to breathe life into a stone,

Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary

With sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,

To give great Charlemain a pen in his hand,

And write to her a love-line.

King.

What her is this?

Laf. Why, doctor she. My lord, there's one arrived,
If you will see her: now, by my faith and honour,
If seriously I may convey my thoughts

In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
With one that, in her sex, her years, profession,
Wisdom, and constancy, hath amazed me more
Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her
(For that is her demand) and know her business?
That done, laugh well at me.

King.
Now, good Lafeu,
Bring in the admiration, that we with thee
May spend our wonder too, or take off thine
By wondering how thou took'st it.

Laf.

And not be all day neither.

Nay, I'll fit you,

[Exit LAFEU.

King. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

Re-enter LAFEU, with HELENA.

This haste hath wings indeed.

Laf. Nay, come your ways.

King

Laf. Nay, come your ways.

This is his majesty—say your mind to him.
A traitor you do look like; but such traitors

His majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid's uncle,
That dare leave two together; fare you well.

[Exit.

King. Now, fair one, does your business follow us? Hel. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was My father; in what he did profess, well found. King. I knew him.

Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards him;

Knowing him is enough. On his bed of death
Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one
Which, as the dearest issue of his practice
And of his old experience the only darling,
He bade me store up, as a triple eye,

Safer than mine own two, more dear; I have so:
And, hearing your majesty is touch'd

With that malignant cause wherein the honour
Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,

I come to tender it, and my appliance,

With all bound humbleness.

King.

We thank you, maiden;

But may not be so credulous of cure,
When our most learned doctors leave us, and
The congregated college have concluded.
That labouring art can never ransom nature
From her inaidable estate.—I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empirics, or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit to esteem.

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
Hel. My duty then shall pay me for my pains.
I will no more enforce my office on you,
Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
A modest one to bear me back again.

King. I cannot give thee less to be call'd grateful.
Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give
As one near death to those that wish him live;
But what at full I know thou know'st no part,

I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

Hel. What I can do can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy. He that of greatest works is finisher,

Oft does them by the weakest minister.

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes. Great floods have

flown

From simple sources; and great seas have dried,

When miracles have by the greatest been denied.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises, and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest and despair most sits.

King. I must not hear thee; fare thee well, kind maid;
Thy pains, not used, must by thyself be paid.
Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.
Hel. Inspired merit so by breath is barr'd.
It is not so with him that all things knows
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us when
The help of Heaven we count the act of men.
Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;
Of Heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor, that proclaim
Myself against the level of mine aim;

But know I think, and think I know most sure
My art is not past power, nor you past cure.

King. Art thou so confident? Within what space Hop'st thou my cure?

Hel.

The greatest grace lending grace,

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring

Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp;
Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass;
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.
King. Upon thy certainty and confidence
What dar'st thou venture?

Hel.

Tax of impudence,

A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame,

Traduced by odious ballads: my maiden's name
Sear'd otherwise; no worse of worst extended,

With vilest torture let my life be ended.

King. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak; His powerful sound within an organ weak; And what impossibility would slay

way.

In common-sense, sense saves another
Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate