time carelessly, as they did who lived in the golden age. In the
summer they lay along under the fine shade of the large forest trees,
marking the playful sports of the wild deer; and so fond were they of
these poor dappled fools, who seemed to be the native inhabitants of
the forest, that it grieved them to be forced to kill them to supply
themselves with venison for their food. When the cold winds of winter
made the duke feel the change of his adverse fortune, he would
endure it patiently, and say: 'These chilling winds which blow upon
my body are true counsellors; they do not flatter, but represent truly to
me my condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing
like so keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that
howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be
extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken
from the head of the venomous and despised toad.' In this manner did
the patient duke draw a useful moral from everything that he saw; and
by the help of this moralizing turn, in that life of his, remote from
public haunts, he could find tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

The banished duke had an only daughter, named Rosalind, whom the
usurper, duke Frederick, when he banished her father, still retained in
his court as a companion for his own daughter Celia. A strict
friendship subsisted between these ladies, which the disagreement
between their fathers did not in the least interrupt, Celia striving by
every kindness in her power to make amends to Rosalind for the
injustice of her own father in deposing the father of Rosalind; and
whenever the thoughts of her father's banishment, and her own
dependence on the false usurper, made Rosalind melancholy, Celia's
whole care was to comfort and console her.