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<h4>CHAPTER XVIII.</h4><div class="poem0"> Traffic is thy god.--Timon. </div> "By my faith!" cried the Earl of Darby, as soon as they found themselves in the street, or rather lane, before the dwelling of Sir Cesar, "I know not in the least where we are; and if I had known it before, my brain is so unsettled with all this strange sight, that I should have forgotten it now. Which way did we turn?" "The other way! the other way!" cried Sir Osborne, "and then to the right." "Pray, sir, can you tell me where the devil I am?" demanded the earl, when they had reached the bottom of the lane, addressing a man who was walking slowly past. "I'll tell you what, my young gallant," answered the man, "if you don't march home with your foolery, I'll lock you up. I am the constable of the watch." "It is my way home that I want to know, friend constable," replied the earl. "For, 'fore God! I know not where I am any more than a new-born child, who, though he comes into the world without asking the way, finds himself very strange when he is in it." "Why, marry, thou art at the back of Baynard's Castle, sir fool," replied the constable. "Ay; then I shall find my road," said the earl. "Thank thee, honest constable; thou art a pleasant fellow, and a civil, and hast risked having thy pate broken to-night more than thou knowest. So, fare thee well!" and turning away, he led his companion through various winding lanes into a broader street, which at length conducted them to the mansion of the Duke of Buckingham. "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." The house of the merchant now stood before them, and Sir Osborne, dismounting from his horse, advanced to the door of what seemed to be a small dark counting-house, in which he found an old man, with many a book and many a slate before him, busily employed in adding to the multitude of little black marks with which the page under his eyes was cumbered. In answer to the knight's inquiry for Master William Hans, he replied that he was in the warehouse, where he might find him if he wished to see him. "Stay, stay! I will show you the way," cried he, with ready politeness. "Lord, sir! our warehouse is a wilderness, wherein a man might lose himself with blessed facility. Thanks be to God therefor; for on May-day, three years last past, called 'Evil May-day,' we should have lost our good master, when the prentices, and watermen, and pick-purses, and vagabonds, broke into all the aliens' houses, and injured many; but, happily, he hid himself under a pile of stockfish, which was in the far end of the little warehouse, to the left of the barrel-room, so that they found him not." While he pronounced this oration, the old clerk locked carefully the door of the counting-house, and led the knight into an immense vaulted chamber, wherein were piled on every side all kinds of things, of every sort and description that human ingenuity can apply to the supply of its necessities or the gratification of its appetites. On one side were displayed a thousand articles of foreign produce or manufacture brought thither for the English market, and on the other appeared the various productions of England, destined soon to be spread over half the world. The objects that met the eye were not more various than the smells that assailed the nose. Here was the delicious odour of salted fish, there the delicate scent of whale oil; here dry skins spread their perfume around, and there a cask of fresh tallow wasted its sweetness on the warehouse air; while through the whole was perceived, as a general medium for all the rest, the agglomerated stink of a hundred unventilated years. Making his way through all, Sir Osborne proceeded directly towards the spot where a small window in the roof poured its light upon a large barrel, the contents of which were undergoing inspection by the worthy Fleming whom he sought. In Flanders the knight had known the good burgess well, and had been sure to receive a visit from him whenever business had called his steps from his adopted to his native country. There might be both an eye to gratitude and an eye to interest in this proceeding of Master William Hans; for the knight had twice procured him a large commission for the army, and, what was still more in those days, had procured him payment. On perceiving his visitor in the present instance, the merchant caught up his black furred gown, which he had thrown off while busied in less dignified occupations, and having hastily insinuated his arms into the sleeves, advanced to meet the knight with a bow of profound respect. "Welcome back to England, my lord!" cried he, in very good English, which could only be distinguished as proceeding from the mouth of a foreigner by a slight accent and a peculiar intonation. "Coot now, my lord, I hope you have not given up your company in Flanders. I have such a cargo of beans in the mouth of the Scheldt, it would have suited the army very well indeet." "But, my good Master Hans," answered the knight, "the army itself is given up since the peace. When I left Lisle, there were scarce three companies left." After a good deal more of such preliminary conversation, in the course of which the knight explained to the merchant the necessity of keeping his name and title secret for the present, they proceeded to the arrangement of those affairs which yet remained unconcluded between them. Conducting the knight back to the counting-house, William Hans turned over several of his great books, looking for the accounts. "Here it is, I think," he cried, at length. "No! that is the Lady de Grey's." "Lady Constance de Grey?" demanded Sir Osborne, in some surprise. "Yes, yes!" answered the merchant. "I receive all the money for her mother's estates, who was a French lady. Did for her father, too, till the coot old lord died. Oh! it was hard work in the time of the war; but I got a Paris Jew to transmit the money to a Flemish Jew, who sent it over to me. They cot ten per cent. the thieves! for commission, but that very thing saved the estates; for they would have been forfeited by the old king Louis, if the Jew, who had given him money in his need, had not made such a noise about it, for fear of losing his ten per cent, that the king let it pass. Ah! here is the account. First, we have not settled since I furnished the wine for the companie, when they had the fever. Five hundred chioppines of wine, at a croat the chioppine, make just twenty-five marks: received thirty marks; five carried to your name. Then for the ransom of the Sire de Beaujeu: you put him at a ransom of two thousand crowns, not knowing who he was, but he has sent you six thousand; because, he says, he would not be ransomed like an écuyer. Creat fool! Why the devil, when he could get off for a little, pay a much?"[11] "No true knight but would do the same," replied Sir Osborne. "It was only by my permission that he got away at all: therefore he was bound in honour to pay the full ransom of a person of his condition." "Well, then," said the Fleming, "here comes the ransom of two esquires, gentlemen they call themselves, five hundred crowns each, making in the whole seven thousand crowns, or two thousand six hundred and twenty-five marks. Then there is against you, freight and carriage of armour and goods, four marks; exchange and commission, three marks; porterage, a croat; warehouse-room, two croats: balance for you, two thousand six hundred and seventeen marks, five shillings, and two croats, which I am ready to pay you, as well as to deliver the two suits of harness and the packages." "The money, at present, I do not want," replied Sir Osborne; "but I will be glad if you would send the arms, and the rest of the packages, to the manor of the Rose, in St. Lawrence Poultney." "To the coot Duke of Buckingham's? Ah! that I will, that I will! But I hope you will stay and take your noon-meal with me; though I know you men of war do not like the company of us merchants. But I will say, I have never found you any way proud." "I would most willingly, Master Hans," answered the knight; "but I go to the court to-morrow for the first time, and I have no small preparation to make with tailors and broiderers." "Oh! stay with me, stay with me, and I will fit you to your desire," answered the Fleming. "There is a tailor lives hard by who will suit you well. I am not going to give you a man who can make nothing but a burgomaster's gown or a merchant's doublet. I know your coot companions would laugh, and say you had had a merchant's tailor; but this is a man who, if you like it, shall stuff out your breeches till you can't sit down, make all the seams by a plumb-line, tighten your girdle till you have no more waist than a wasp; and, moreover, he is tailor to the Duke of Suffolk." The knight found this recommendation quite sufficient; and agreeing to dine with the honest Fleming, the tailor was sent for, who, with a great display of sartorial learning, devised several suits, in which Sir Osborne might appear at court, without being either so gaudy as the butterflies of the day, or so plain as to call particular attention. The only difficulty was to know whether the tailor could furnish a complete suit for the knight, and one for each of his four attendants, by the next morning; but after much calculation, and summing up of all the friendly tailors within his knowledge, he undertook to do it; and, what is wonderful for a tailor, kept his word. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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