anionship.

A number of Verona's noble youths, poets and light-hearted
men-about-town, frequented Mercutio's chambers, and with these Hamlet
soon became on terms.

Among the rest were an agreeable gentleman, with hazel eyes, named
Benvolio, and a gallant young fellow called Romeo, whom Mercutio
bantered pitilessly and loved heartily. This Romeo, who belonged to one
of the first families, was a very susceptible spark, which the slightest
breath of a pretty woman was sufficient to blow into flame. To change
the metaphor, he fell from one love affair into another as easily and
logically as a ripe pomegranate drops from a bough. He was generally
unlucky in these matters, curiously enough, for he was a handsome youth
in his saffron satin doublet slashed with black, and his jaunty velvet
bonnet with its trailing plume of ostrich feather.

At the time of Hamlet's coming to Verona, Romeo was in a great despair
of love in consequence of an unrequited passion for a certain lady of
the city, between whose family and his own a deadly feud had existed for
centuries. Somebody had stepped on somebody else's lap-dog in the far
ages, and the two families had been slashing and hacking at each other
ever since. It appeared that Romeo had scaled a garden wall, one night,
and broken upon the meditations of his inamorata, who, as chance would
have it, was sitting on her balcony enjoying the moonrise. No lady could
be insensible to such devotion, for it would have been death to Romeo
if any of her kinsmen had found him in that particular locality. Some
tender phrases passed between them, perhaps; but the lady was flurried,
taken unawares, and afterwards, it seemed, altered her mind, and would
have no further commerce with the Montague. This business furnished
Mercutio's quiver with innumerable sly shafts, which Romeo received for
the most part in good humor.

With these three gentlemen--Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo--Hamlet saw
life in Verona, as young men will see life wherever they happen to be.
Many a time the nightingale ceased singing and the lark began before
they were abed; but perhaps it is not wise to inquire too closely into
this. A month had slipped away since Hamlet's arrival; the hyacinths
were opening in the gardens, and it was spring.

One morning, as he and Mercutio were lounging arm in arm on a bridge
near their lodgings, they met a knave in livery puzzling over a
parchment which he was plainly unable to decipher.

"Re