ned
courtier."

Bertram's last words were spoken to Helena, but they were words of
mere civility, wishing her happiness; and he concluded his short
farewel to her with saying, "Be comfortable to my mother your
mistress, and make much of her."

Helena had long loved Bertram, and when she wept in sad and mournful
silence, the tears she shed were not for Gerard de Narbon. Helena
loved her father, but in the present feeling of a deeper love, the
object of which she was about to lose, she had forgotten the very form
and features of her dead father, her imagination presenting no image
to her mind but Bertram's.

Helena had long loved Bertram, yet she always remembered that he
was the count of Rossilion, descended from the most ancient family
in France. She of humble birth. Her parents of no note at all. His
ancestors all noble. And therefore she looked up to the high-born
Bertram, as to her master and to her dear lord, and dared not form
any wish but to live his servant, and so living to die his vassal. So
great the distance seemed to her between his height of dignity and her
lowly fortunes, that she would say, "It were all one that I should
love a bright peculiar star and think to wed it, Bertram is so far
above me."

Bertram's absence filled her eyes with tears, and her heart with
sorrow; for though she loved without hope, yet it was a pretty comfort
to her to see him every hour, and Helena would sit and look upon his
dark eye, his arched brow, and the curls of his fine hair, till she
seemed to draw his portrait on the tablet of her heart, that heart too
capable of retaining the memory of every line in the features of that
loved face.

Gerard de Narbon, when he died, left her no other portion than some
prescriptions of rare and well proved virtue, which by deep study and
long experience in medicine, he had collected as sovereign and almost
infallible remedies. Among the rest there was one set down as an
approved medicine for the disease under which Lafeu said the king at
that time languished; and when Helena heard of the king's complaint,
she, who till now had been so humble and so hopeless, formed an
ambitious project in her mind to go herself to Paris, and undertake
the cure of the king. But though Helena was the possessor of this
choice prescription, it was unlikely, as the king as well as his
physicians were of opinion that his disease was incurable, that they
would give credit to a poor unlearned virgin, if she