I was fain to bow at so much civility. Yet he was laughing softly all the while, and there was a covert look in his eye that I mistrusted.
“Would you say that I had been drinking,” said he, “if I declare to you upon my honour that London never was in Spain at all?”
“I take it nowise amiss, sir; yet if London is no part of Spain I fail to see how it can be the centre of the world.”
For the moment I feared this extraordinary man would fall from his stool, so forcibly did his laughter ascend to the roof. I felt some discomposure, for surely such an action was no part of courtesy. Judging, however, that it is the first business of the polite to refrain from outfacing the rude with their own manners, I gathered all my patience and said, not without haughtiness, I fear: “Sir, are you not from foreign parts?”
“Nay, my young son of the Spains, I am come to foreign parts, if that is your question. I was born and bred in England; I am the natural son of an English king; I have dwelt in England half my years; and when I die my bones shall lie in England, for since the time of Uthyr Pendragon, the respected progenitor of an English sovereign, no scion of my name has left his bones to rot in a foreign climate.”
“England,” said I; “the land is as strange to me as far Cathay.”
It was in vain that I strove to recall what I had heard of this remote island country. Yet, as I could recollect nothing whatever about it, I was fain to believe that I had never heard of it at all.
CHAPTER III
OF THE EATING OF MEAT
No sooner had I made this confession than this remarkable man uttered a shout that filled the place like the report of a caliver.
“By my hand,” he cried, “what a nation! Have you ever heard of the moon, my son?”