t
back with a silken thread; and Romeo was as loth to part as she: for
the sweetest music to lovers is the sound of each other's tongues at
night. But at last they parted, wishing mutually sweet sleep and rest
for that night. The day was breaking when they parted, and Romeo, who
was too full of thoughts of his mistress and that blessed meeting
to allow him to sleep, instead of going home, bent his course to a
monastery hard by, to find friar Lawrence. The good friar was already
up at his devotions, but seeing young Romeo abroad so early, he
conjectured rightly that he had not been a-bed that night, but that
some distemper of youthful affection had kept him waking. He was right
in imputing the cause of Romeo's wakefulness to love, but he made a
wrong guess at the object, for he thought that his love for Rosaline
had kept him waking. But when Romeo revealed his new passion for
Juliet, and requested the assistance of the friar to marry them that
day, the holy man lifted up his eyes and hands in a sort of wonder at
the sudden change in Romeo's affections, for he had been privy to all
Romeo's love for Rosaline, and his many complaints of her disdain; and
he said, that young men's love lay not truly in their hearts, but in
their eyes. But Romeo replying that he himself had often chidden him
for doting on Rosaline, who could not love him again, whereas Juliet
both loved and was beloved by him, the friar assented in some measure
to his reasons; and thinking that a matrimonial alliance between young
Juliet and Romeo might happily be a means of making up the long breach
between the Capulets and the Mountagues; which no one more lamented
than this good friar, who was a friend to both the families, and had
often interposed his mediation to make up the quarrel without effect;
partly moved by policy, and partly by his fondness for young Romeo, to
whom he could deny nothing, the old man consented to join their hands
in marriage.

Now was Romeo blest indeed, and Juliet, who knew his intent from a
messenger which she had dispatched according to promise, did not fail
to be early at the cell of friar Lawrence, where their hands were
joined in holy marriage; the good friar praying the heavens to smile
upon that act, and in the union of this young Mountague and young
Capulet to bury the old strife and long dissensions of their families.

The ceremony being over, Juliet hastened home, where she staid
impatient for the coming of night, at w