A single combat fought with prodigious valour, and described with amazing accuracy.
Give me leave, sir, said Sir Charles, to ask if you ate in all this time?
Alas! sir, replied Sir George, sighs and tears were all my sustenance.
Sir Charles, Mr. Glanville, and Miss, laughing at this answer, Arabella seemed greatly confused.
It is not to be imagined, said she, that Sir George, or, to say better, Prince Veridomer, lived ten months without eating any thing to support nature; but such trifling circumstances are always left out in the relations of histories; and truly an audience must be very dull and unapprehensive, that cannot conceive, without being told, that a man must necessarily eat in the space of ten months.
But the food Sir George lived on, replied the baronet, was very unsubstantial, and would not afford him much nourishment.
I suppose, resumed Arabella, he lived much upon such provisions as the forest afforded him; such as wild fruits, herbs, bitter sallads, and the like; which, considering the melancholy that possessed him, would appear a voluptuous repast; and which the unfortunate Orontes, when he was in the same situation, thought infinitely too good for him.
Sir Charles, finding Arabella took no notice of the historian's hyperbole of living upon his sighs and tears, passed it over, for fear of offending her; and Sir George, who had been in some anxiety how to bring himself off, when he perceived Arabella was reasonable enough to suppose he must have eat during his abode in the forest, went on with his relation in this manner.
I lived, as I before observed to you, madam, in this cave for ten months; and truly I was so reconciled to that solitary way of life, and found so much sweetness in it, that I believe I should have remained there till this day, but for the adventure which I am going to recount.