“I am come,” said he, when I had greeted him and bidden him sit and rest, “like a dove from the ends of the earth, yet with not so much as an olive leaf to fill my mouth withal. My Hollander, even the poet, friend of the immortals, can eat. Even the honey on Mount Athos satisfieth not; and nectar leaveth its void. As a sign of peace and good-will, my humble comrade, I will eat whatsoever bread and meat you may place before me; for in truth my teeth have lost their cunning, and he who late warbled elegiacs hath almost forgot how to swallow a cup of vulgar sack.”
’Twas not long before with Jeannette’s aid I set before him a meal the very sight of which filled his eyes with tears, and set his hand a trembling. It seemed kinder not to stand by while he devoured it; yet even in the adjoining room we could hear him, betwixt his mouthfuls, talk of Hebe and Ganymede, and utter brave speeches about Venus who ever haunted his wandering steps, and in mortal guise waited on her favoured servant. By which I understood he was struck with the beauty of my sweet Jeannette; for the which I forgave him much.
But when, after a little, we returned to see how he fared, he was fallen forward on the table in a deep sleep, from which it never even roused him when I lifted him in my arms and laid him on a clean straw bed in the corner of the office. And for twenty hours by the clock did he sleep there, never turning a limb, till it seemed a charity to rouse him and give him more food.
Then when he found himself refreshed and filled, he gave us his news; which, shorn of all its flourishes, was shortly this.
After he had written his letter from Chester, he was detained many a week in custody as a vagabond and a lunatic. And at last, shaking the dust of that city from his feet, he tramped to the next, where a like fate awaited him. And so, tossed about, like a drift log on the unpitying ocean, he had found himself cast up at last in London; where, remembering me, he had with many a rebuff sought me out, and here he was.
When he discovered that the maiden—his once mistress and incomparable swan—was of our household, he fell into strange raptures concerning the indulgences of the gods towards their favourites—meaning himself. And the sight of her, and her goodness to him—for with her own purse she found him a lodging not far off—called up from him many a burst of poetic fire, such as it grieves me to think cannot now be recovered. More than that, he told us a little of Ludar, whom, as has been said, he encountered at Chester.
More yet, he had one piece of news which was of no little import to the maiden and us all, as you shall hear.