ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Page: 53

As it hath fated her to be my motive
And helper to a husband. But, O strange men!
That can such sweet use make of what they hate,
When saucy trusting of the cozen'd thoughts
Defiles the pitchy night! so lust doth play
With what it loathes, for that which is away:
But more of this hereafter.--You, Diana,
Under my poor instructions yet must suffer
Something in my behalf.

DIANA.
Let death and honesty
Go with your impositions, I am yours
Upon your will to suffer.

HELENA.
Yet, I pray you:
But with the word the time will bring on summer,
When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns,
And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;
Our waggon is prepar'd, and time revives us:
All's well that ends well: still the fine's the crown;
Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.

[Exeunt.]



SCENE 5. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.

[Enter COUNTESS, LAFEU, and CLOWN.]

LAFEU.
No, no, no, son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there,
whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbaked and
doughy youth of a nation in his colour: your daughter-in-law
had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more
advanced by the king than by that red-tail'd humble-bee I speak
of.

COUNTESS.
I would I had not known him! It was the death of the most
virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating: if
she had partaken of my flesh, and cost me the dearest groans of a
mother, I could not have owed her a more rooted love.

LAFEU.
'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand
salads ere we light on such another herb.

CLOWN.
Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or,
rather, the herb of grace.

LAFEU.
They are not salad-herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs.

CLOWN.
I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in
grass.

LAFEU.
Whether dost thou profess thyself,--a knave or a fool?

CLOWN.
A fool, sir, at a woman's service, and a knave at a man's.

LAFEU.
Your distinction?

CLOWN.
I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service.

LAFEU.
So you were a knave at his service, indeed.