hot summers like to take vengeance with breeding of a plague.
These were traitors to the state, and a heavy price--two thousand
ducats--being put on each head, their friends had slain them and brought
all three to the slab, and so sold blood of others and their own faith.
No state buys heads so many, nor pays half so high a price for that
sorry merchandise. But what I most admired was to see over against the
Duke's palace a fair gallows in alabaster, reared express to bring him,
and no other, for the least treason to the state; and there it stands in
his eye whispering him memento mori. I pondered, and owned these signors
my masters, who will let no man, not even their sovereign, be above the
common weal. Hard by, on a wall, the workmen were just finishing, by
order of the seigniory, the stone effigy of a tragical and enormous act
enacted last year, yet on the wall looks innocent. Here two gentle folks
whisper together, and there other twain, their swords by their side.
Four brethren were they, which did on either side conspire to poison the
other two, and so halve their land in lieu of quartering it; and at a
mutual banquet these twain drugged the wine, and those twain envenomed a
marchpane, to such good purpose that the same afternoon lay four 'brave
men' around one table grovelling in mortal agony, and cursing of one
another and themselves, and so concluded miserably, and the land, for
which they had lost their immortal souls, went into another family. And
why not? it could not go into a worse.

"But O, sovereign wisdom of bywords! how true they put the finger on
each nation's, or particular's, fault.

"Quand Italie sera sans poison
Et France sans trahison
Et l'Angleterre sans guerre,
Lors sera le monde sans terre."

Richart explained this to Catherine, then proceeded: "And after this
they took me to the quay, and presently I espied among the masts one
garlanded with amaranth flowers. 'Take me thither,' said I, and I let
my guide know the custom of our Dutch skippers to hoist flowers to
the masthead when they are courting a maid. Oft had I scoffed at this
saying, 'So then his wooing is the earth's concern. But now, so far from
the Rotter, that bunch at a masthead made my heart leap with assurance
of a countryman. They carried me, and oh, Margaret! on the stern of that
Dutch boy, was written in muckle letters,

RICHART ELIASSOEN, AMSTERDAM.

'Put me down,' I said; 'for our Lady's sake put me