ndearment, and I
may have been accustomed to say, 'Thou art my great delight; thou dost
refresh and cherish me; thou makest me to love the woods and lonely
haunts, and thy breath is ever courted by my face.' I was not aware that
some one was giving an ear, deceived by these ambiguous words; and
thinking the name of the breeze, so often called upon by me, to be that
of a Nymph, he believed some Nymph was beloved by me.

"The rash informer of an imaginary crime immediately went to Procris,
and with his whispering tongue related what he had heard. Love is a
credulous thing. When it was told her, she fell down fainting, with
sudden grief; and coming to, after a long time, she declared that she
was wretched, and {born} to a cruel destiny; and she complained about my
constancy. Excited by a groundless charge,[117] she dreads that which,
{indeed}, is nothing; {and} fears a name without a body; and, in her
wretchedness, grieves as though about a real rival. Yet she is often in
doubt, and, in her extreme wretchedness, hopes she may be deceived, and
denies credit to the information; and unless she beholds it herself,
will not pass sentence upon the criminality of her husband. The
following light of the morning had banished the night, when I sallied
forth, and sought the woods; and being victorious in the fields, I said,
'Come, breeze, and relieve my pain;' and suddenly I seemed to hear I
know not what groans in the midst of my words; yet I said, 'Come hither,
most delightful {breeze}.' Again, the falling leaves making a gentle
noise, I thought it was a wild beast, and I discharged my flying weapon.
It was Procris; and receiving the wound in the middle of her breast, she
cried out, 'Ah, wretched me!' When the voice of my attached wife was
heard, headlong and distracted, I ran towards {that} voice. I found her
dying, and staining her scattered vestments with blood, and drawing her
own present (ah, wretched me!) from out of her wound; I lifted up her
body, dearer to me than my own, in my guilty arms, and I bound up her
cruel wounds with the garments torn from my bosom; and I endeavored to
stanch the blood, and besought her that she would not forsake me, {thus}
criminal, by her death. She, wanting strength, and now expiring, forced
herself to utter these few words:

"'I suppliantly beseech thee, by the ties of our marriage, and by the
Gods above, and my own Gods, and if I have deserved anything well of
thee, by that {as well}, and b