sufficient room in the two princesses, my sisters, for paternal love
wherein to place all its kindness.

KING. Ah! empty comfort to my sorrow. There is naught that can console
me for thy loss. My grief fills my soul, I am conscious of nothing
else; in presence of such cruel destiny, I look to what I lose, and
see not what I still retain.

PSY. My Lord, you know better than myself that we must rule our will
by that of heaven; and in this sad farewell I can only say to you that
which you can much better say to others. These gods are sovereign
lords of the gifts they deign to offer us; they leave them in our
hands so long only as it pleases them; when they withdraw them, we
have no right to murmur over the favours which their hands refuse any
longer to pour upon us. My Lord, I am a gift they have offered to your
vows, and when, by this decree, they wish to take me back, they
deprive you of nothing that you do not hold from them; and it is
without a murmur that you must resign me.

KING. Ah! seek, I pray, better foundations for the comfort thy heart
would offer me. Do not by the fallacy of thy reasoning increase the
burden of the piercing grief which now torments me. Dost thou imagine
that thou givest me a powerful reason why I should not complain of
this decree of heaven? and in this proceeding of the gods, of which
thou biddest me be satisfied, dost thou not clearly see a deadly
severity? Consider the state in which the gods force me to resign
thee, and that in which my hapless heart received thee. Thou shalt
know then that they take from me much more than they gave: from them I
received in thee, my daughter, a gift I did not ask for; then I found
in it but few charms, and without joy I saw my family increased by it.