ilver.

His imperial majesty spoke often to me, and I returned answers, but
neither of us could understand a syllable. There were several of his
priests and lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habit), who were
commanded to address themselves to me, and I spoke to them in as many
languages as I had the least smattering of, which were High and Low
Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca,[6] but all to
no purpose.

[Footnote 6: _Lingua Franca_ was the name given to a mixed dialect
used in some parts of the Mediterranean coasts as means of communication
between people of different nationalities. It consisted largely of
corrupted Italian words.]

After about two hours the court retired, and I was left with a strong
guard to prevent the impertinence and probably the malice of the rabble,
who were very impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst, and
some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me as I sat on
the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my
left eye. But the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized,
and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my
hands, which some of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward
with the butt ends of their pikes into my reach. I took them all in my
right hand, put five of them into my coat pocket, and as to the sixth, I
made a countenance as if I would eat him alive. The poor man squalled
terribly, and the colonel and his officers were in much pain, especially
when they saw me take out my penknife; but I soon put them out of fear,
for looking mildly, and immediately cutting the strings he was bound
with, I set him gently on the ground, and away he ran. I treated the
rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out of my pocket, and I
observed both the soldiers and people were highly delighted at this mark
of my clemency, which was represented very much to my advantage at
court.

Toward night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on
the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight, during which time
the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. Six hundred beds
of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my
house; an hundred and fifty of their beds sewn together made up the
breadth and length, and these were four double, which, however, kept me
but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of
smooth st