Psyche | Page 5

heart and charms as great.
CID. A choice sweeter by half can rescue your mutual friendship from
love; and there is such a rare merit apparent in you both that a gentle
counsel would, out of pity, save your hearts from what they are
preparing for themselves.
CLE. This generous advice shows us a kindness which touches our
hearts; but heaven, madam, reduces us to the misfortune of not being
able to profit by it.
AGE. Your illustrious pity would in vain dissuade us from a love of
which we both dread the result. What our friendship, Madam, has not
done cannot be effected by any other means.
CID. The power of Psyche must have.... Here she is.

SCENE III.--PSYCHE, CIDIPPE, AGLAURA, CLEOMENES,
AGENOR.
CID. Come, sister, and enjoy what is offered to you.
AGL. Prepare your charms to receive here a new triumph.
CID. These two princes have both so well felt the power of your beauty
that their lips are eager to declare it.
PSY. I little thought myself to be the cause of their pensiveness, and I
should have expected it to be quite otherwise when I found them

talking to you.
AGL. We have neither sufficient rank nor beauty to make us deserving
of their love and solicitude, but they favour us with the honour of their
confidence.
CLE. (to PSYCHE). The avowal which we would make to your divine
charms, Madam, is, no doubt, a rash one; but so many hearts, on the
point of expiring, are by such avowals obliged to displease you, that
you have ceased to punish them by the terrors of your wrath. You see in
us two friends who were joined in childhood by a happy similarity of
feeling, and this tender union has been strengthened by a hundred
contests of esteem and gratitude. The attachment of our friendship has
been proved in the severe assaults of unfavourable fortune, the
contempt of death, the sight of torture, and the glorious splendour of
mutual good offices; but whatever trials it may have endured, to-day
witnesses its greatest triumph, and nothing proves so much its tried
fidelity as its duration through the rivalry of love. Yes, in spite of so
many charms, its constancy subjects our vows to the laws it gives us. It
comes with sweet and entire deference, to submit the success of our
passion to your choice; and, to give a weight to our competition which
may bring the balance of state reasons to favour the choice of one of us,
this friendship intends of free will to unite our two estates to the fortune
of the happy one.
AGE. Yes, Madam, we wish to make of these two estates, which we
propose to unite under your happy choice, a help towards obtaining you.
The sacrifice which we make to the king, your father, in order to ensure
this happiness, has nothing difficult in it to our loving hearts, and it will
be a necessary gift that the rejected unfortunate should make over to the
one who is fortunate a power which he will no longer know bow to
enjoy.
PSY. Princes, you both display to my eyes a choice so precious and
dazzling that it would satisfy the proudest heart. But your passion, your
friendship, your supreme virtue, all increase the value of your vows of
fidelity, and make it a merit that I should oppose myself to what you
ask of me. I must not listen to my heart only before engaging in such a
union, but my hand must await my father's decision before it can
dispose of itself, and my sisters have rights superior to mine. But if I
were referred absolutely to my own wishes, you might both have too

great a share in them, and my entire esteem be so evenly balanced
between you that I should not be able to decide in favour of either. I
would indeed respond with most affectionate interest to the ardour of
your suit, but amid so much merit two hearts are too much for me, one
heart too little for you. The accomplishment of my dearest wishes
would be to me a burden were it granted to me by your love. Yes,
Princes, I should greatly prefer you to all those whose love will follow
yours, but I could never have the heart to prefer one of you to the other.
My tenderness would be too great a sacrifice to the one whom I might
choose, and I should think myself barbarously unjust to inflict so great
a wrong upon the other. Indeed, you both possess such greatness of
soul that it would be wrong to make either of you miserable, and you
must seek in love the means of being both happy. If your hearts honour