Truth.  Let me, therefore, return to my well, and let him who wishes to behold me, if such there be, repair to the brink and look down.

Jupiter.  No, daughter, you shall not return to your well.  I have already perceived that you are not of yourself sufficient for the office I have assigned to you, and I am about to provide you with two auxiliaries.  You are Truth.  Tell me how this one appears to you.

Truth.  Oh, father, the beautiful nymph! how mature, and yet how comely! how good-humoured, yet how gentle and grave!  Her robe is closely zoned; her upraised finger approaches her lip; her foot falls soft as snow.  What is her name?

Jupiter.  Discretion.  And this other?

Truth.  Oh, father! the cordial look, the blooming cheek, the bright smile that is almost a laugh, the buoyant step, and the expansive bosom!  What name bears she?

Jupiter.  Good Nature.  Return, my daughter, to earth; continue to enlighten man’s ignorance and to reprove his folly; but let Discretion suggest the occasion, and Good Nature inspire the wording of your admonitions.  I cannot engage that you may not, even with these precautions, sometimes pay a visit to the stake; and if, when an adventure of this sort appears imminent, Discretion should counsel a temporary retirement to your well, I am sure Good Nature will urge nothing to the contrary.

THE THREE PALACES

Three pairs of young people, each a youth with his bride, came together along a road to the point where it divided to the right and left.  On one side was inscribed, “To the Palace of Truth,” and on the other, “To the Palace of Illusion.”

“This way, my beauty!” cried one of the youths, drawing his companion in the direction of the Palace of Truth.  “To the place where and where alone thy perfections may be beheld as they are!”

“And my imperfections!” whispered the young spouse, but her tone was airy and confident.

“Well,” said the second youth, “does the choice beseem you upon whom the moon of your nuptials is beaming still.  My beloved and I are riper in Hymen’s lore by not less, I ween, than one fortnight.  Prudence impels us towards the Palace of Illusion.”

“Thy will is mine, Alonso,” said his lady.

“I,” said the third youth, “will seek neither; for I would not be wise over-much, while of what I deem myself to know I would be well assured.  Happy am I, and bless my lot, yet have I beheld a red mouse in closer contiguity to my beloved than I could bring myself to approve, albeit it leapt not from her mouth as they do sometimes.  Yet do I know it for a red mouse and nothing worse; had I inhabited the Palace of Illusion haply I had deemed it a rat.  And, it being a red mouse as it indubitably was, to what end fancy it a tawny-throated nightingale?”

While, therefore, the other pairs proceeded on the paths they had respectively chosen, this sage youth and his bride settled themselves at the parting of the ways, built their cot, tended their garden, tilled their field and raised fruits around them, including children.