d to suffer death, was afflicted beyond
measure.

Pisanio persuaded her to take comfort, and wait with patient fortitude
for the time when Posthumus should see and repent his injustice: in the
meantime, as she refused in her distress to return to her father's
court, he advised her to dress herself in boy's clothes for more
security in travelling; to which device she agreed, and thought in that
disguise she would go over to Rome, and see her husband, whom, though
he had used her so barbarously, she could not forget to love.

When Pisanio had provided her with her new apparel, he left her to her
uncertain fortune, being obliged to return to court; but before he
departed he gave her a phial of cordial, which he said the queen had
given him as a sovereign remedy in all disorders.

The queen, who hated Pisanio because he was a friend to Imogen and
Posthumus, gave him this phial, which she supposed contained poison,
she having ordered her physician to give her some poison, to try its
effects (as she said) upon animals; but the physician, knowing her
malicious disposition, would not trust her with real poison, but gave
her a drug which would do no other mischief than causing a person to
sleep with every appearance of death for a few hours. This mixture,
which Pisanio thought a choice cordial, he gave to Imogen, desiring
her, if she found herself ill upon the road, to take it; and so, with
blessings and prayers for her safety and happy deliverance from her
undeserved troubles, he left her.

Providence strangely directed Imogen's steps to the dwelling of her two
brothers, who had been stolen away in their infancy. Bellarius, who
stole them away, was a lord in the court of Cymbeline, and having been
falsely accused to the king of treason, and banished from the court, in
revenge he stole away the two sons of Cymbeline, and brought them up in
a forest, where he lived concealed in a cave. He stole them through
revenge, but he soon loved them as tenderly as if they had been his own
children, educated them carefully, and they grew up fine youths, their
princely spirits leading them to bold and daring actions; and as they
subsisted by hunting, they were active and hardy, and were always
pressing their supposed father to let them seek their fortune in the
wars.

At the cave where these youths dwelt it was Imogen's fortune to arrive.
She had lost her way in a large forest, through which her road lay to
Milford-Haven (from which she