In addition to the classics, the poet has been to the Norman fablers for
his story. The subterranean passage has been more than once repeated in
romance; and the closing incident, the assistance given by the husband
to his wife's elopement, has been imitated in the farce of _Lionel and
Clarissa._

SEEING AND BELIEVING.

My father (said the damsel) is King of the Distant Islands, where the
treasure of the earth is collected. Never was greater wealth known, and I
was heiress of it all.

But it is impossible to foresee what is most to be desired for us in this
world. I was a king's daughter, I was rich, I was handsome, I was lively;
and yet to all those advantages I owed my ill-fortune.

Among other suitors for my hand there came two on the same day, one of
whom was a youth named Ordauro, handsome from head to foot; the other an
old man of seventy, whose name was Folderico. Both were rich and of noble
birth; but the greybeard was counted extremely wise, and of a foresight
more than human. As I did not feel in want of his foresight, the youth
was far more to my taste; and accordingly I listened to him with perfect
good-will, and gave the wise man no sort of encouragement. I was not at
liberty, however, to determine the matter; my father had a voice in it;
so, fearing what he would advise, I thought to secure a good result by
cunning and management. It is an old observation, that the craft of a
woman exceeds all other craft. Indeed, it is Solomon's own saying. But
now-a-days people laugh at it; and I found to my cost that the laugh is
just. I requested my father to proclaim, first, that nobody should have
me in marriage who did not surpass me in swiftness (for I was a damsel of