"Now, by my faith, Darnley, or Maurice, or whatever you please to be called," said the earl, "if you have any hospitality in your nature, you will give me board and lodging for a night. May you make so free with the good duke's house?"
"Most willingly will I do it," said Sir Osborne, "and find myself now doubly happy in his grace's request, to use his mansion as if it were my own."
"Were I you," said Lord Darby, "and had so much of Buckingham's regard, I would hear more of that strange man, if he be a man, Sir Cesar; for 'tis said that the duke and Sir John Morton are the only persons that know who and what he really is. God help us! we have seen as strange a sight to-night as mortal eyes ever beheld."
"I have heard one of my companions in arms relate that a circumstance precisely similar happened to himself in Italy," replied the knight. "The famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa, showed him out of friendship a glass, wherein he beheld the lady of his love reading one of his own letters,[[10]] which thing she was doing, as he ascertained afterwards, at the very minute and day that the glass was shown to him. I never thought, however, to have seen anything like it myself."
It may be easily supposed that various were the remarks and conjectures of the two young noblemen during the rest of the evening, but with these it will be unnecessary to trouble the reader. Suffice it that we have translated as literally as possible the account which Vonderbrugius gives of the circumstances; nor shall we make any comment on the facts, leaving it to the reader's own mind to form what conclusion he may think right. Whether the whole was an artifice on the part of Sir Cesar, aided by strongly-excited imagination on theirs, each person must judge for himself; but certain it is that they both firmly believed that they saw the same thing; and, as in the well-known case of Lord Surrey, the argument is of avail, that the magician had no object or interest in deceiving those to whom he displayed his powers. The effect, however, upon the mind of Sir Osborne was to give him new hope and courage; for so completely had the former prediction of Sir Cesar been fulfilled, that though he might still doubt, yet his very hesitation leant to the side of hope.
Lord Darby laughed, and vowed 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, and wrote it down in his tablets, lest he should not believe a word of it the next morning. When the morning came, however, he found that his belief had not fled; and before leaving Sir Osborne, he talked over the business with more gravity than he could usually command. Many arrangements also were necessary to be made in regard to the knight's introduction to the court; but at length it was agreed that the earl should account for his acquaintance with Sir Osborne by saying that their parents had been friends, and that, having been educated in the court of Burgundy, the knight was then in England for the first time since his youth.
"All this is true," said Lord Darby, "for my father was well known to yours, though, perhaps, they could hardly be called friends; but, however, there are not above two grains of lie to an ounce of truth, so it will poison no one."
When all their plans were finally settled, Lord Darby took leave of the knight, and left him to make his preparations for the next morning. As soon as he had departed, Sir Osborne called for his horse, and, accompanied by Longpole, of whom he had seen little since his arrival in London, set out for the house of the honest Flemish merchant, William Hans, from whom, as we have said, he expected sundry sums of money.
As they proceeded, the worthy custrel, who, for the purpose of showing him the way, rode by his side (permitting him, nevertheless, to keep about a yard in advance), did not fail to take advantage of their proximity to regale the knight's ears with many a quaint remark upon the great bee-hive, as he called it, in which they were.
"Lord! Lord!" said he, "to think of the swarm of honey-getting, or rather money-getting insects, that here toil from morn to night, but to pile up within their narrow cells that sweet trash which, after all, is none of theirs; for ever and anon comes my good lord king, the master of the hive, and smokes them for a subsidy. Look at yon fat fellow, your worship! For God's sake, look at him! How proud he seems, waddling forward under the majesty of his belly! Well, if a paunch like that be the damnation attached to an alderman's gown, heaven absolve me from city feasts, I say! And his lean follower; see! with the quill behind his ear, and inkhorn at his button, so meagre, as if he wished to mock his master's fatness. Oh! 'tis the way, 'tis the way; the fat merchant seems to absorb all the lean clerk's portion. Everything begets its like; fat gets fat, riches get riches, and even leanness grows more lean, as it were, by living upon itself. Now to the left, your worship, up that paved court."