g Cressida; he contrives that she shall praise
Troilus herself, incidentally, before he has even named him. With his
frivolities he mingles serious things, wise and practical advice like a
good uncle, the better to inspire confidence; then he rises to depart
without having yet said what brought him. Cressida's interest is excited
at once, the more so that reticence is not habitual to Pandarus; her
curiosity, irritated from line to line, becomes anxiety, almost anguish,
for though Cressida be of the fourteenth century, and the first of a
long line of heroines of romance, with her appears already the nervous
woman. She starts at the least thing, she is the most impressionable of
beings, "the ferfullest wight that might be"; even the state of the
atmosphere affects her. What is then the matter? Oh! only this:

... the kinges dere sone,
The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free,
Which alwey for to do wel is his wone,
The noble Troilus, so loveth thee,
That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be.
Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye?
Do what yow list.[513]

The conversation continues, more and more crafty on the part of
Pandarus; his friend asks for so little: look less unkindly upon him,
and it will be enough.

But here appears Chaucer's art in all its subtilty. The wiles of
Pandarus, carried as far as his character will allow, might have
sufficed to make a Cressida of romance yield; but it would have been too
easy play for the master already sure of his powers. He makes Pandarus
say a word too much; Cressida unmasks him on the spot, obliges him to
acknowledge that in asking less he desired more for his friend, and now
she is blushing and indignant. Chaucer does not want her to yield to
disquisitions and descriptions; all the cleverness of Pandarus is there
only to make us better appreciate the slow inward working that is going
on in Cressida's heart; her uncle will have sufficed to stir her; that
is all, and, truth to say, that is something. She feels for Troilus no
clearly defined sentiment, but her curiosity is aroused. And just then,
while the conversation is still going on, loud shouts are heard, the
crowd rushes, balconies are filled, strains of music burst forth; 'tis
the return, after a victorious sally, of one of the heroes who defend
Troy. This hero is Troilus, and in the midst of this triumphal scene,
the pretty, frail, laughing, tender-hearted Cressida beholds for the
firs