where sometimes he might see her whom both loved. And on his part Palamon
was jealous of Arcite, who might even now be calling together his kin in
Thebes to make onslaught on Athens and win his lady Emilia.

"Yow loveres axe I now this questioun,
Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun?"

Now when Arcite had for a year or two endured this torment, he dreamed one
night that the god Mercury appeared to him, and said to him, "To Athens
shalt thou wend." Whereupon Arcite started up, and saw in the mirror that
his sufferings had so changed him that he might live in Athens unknown. So
he clad himself as a labourer, and went with one squire to Athens, and
offered his service at the court, where for a year or two he was page of
the chamber to Emilia, and passed under the name of Philostrate. And in the
course of time he was so honoured that Theseus took notice of him, and made
him squire of his own chamber, and maintained him nobly.

Meantime Palamon had lain seven years in prison, when it befel on the third
day of May (as the old books that tell this story say) that, aided by a
friend, he broke prison, having given his gaoler to drink of drugged wine,
and so fled the city, and lay hid in a grove. Hither by chance came Arcite
to do observance to May; and first Palamon heard him sing

"Wel-come be thou, faire fresshe May;
I hope that I som grene gete may,"

and thereafter fall into a study, as lovers will, lamenting his hard fate
that he should be passing under a false name, and daily be slain by the
eyes of Emilia. Whereat Palamon started up, and reproached him, and
challenged him to fight; and Arcite answered him no less boldly, saying he