ve can make
black white! The couple of baggages have not even a bed, and must pass
their wedding night on the straw. They have just been round to every
house begging a pint of small beer, with which they mean to get drunk; a
royal treat for a wedding day, your honour!' Everybody round about
laughed loudly, and the unhappy, despised pair cast down their eyes.
Emilius indignantly pushed the chatterer away. 'Here, take this!' he
cried, and threw a hundred ducats, which he had received that morning,
into the hands of the amazed bridegroom. The betrothed couple and their
parents wept aloud, threw themselves clumsily on their knees, and kissed
his hands and the skirts of his coat. He tried to make his escape. 'Let
that keep hunger out of your doors as long as it lasts!' he exclaimed,
quite stunned by his feelings. 'Oh!' they all screamed, 'oh, your
honour! we shall be rich and happy till the day of our deaths, and
longer too, if we live longer.'

He knew not how he got away from them; but he found himself alone, and
hastened with unsteady steps into the wood. Here he sought out the
thickest, loneliest spot, and threw himself down on a grassy knoll, no
longer keeping back the bursting stream of his tears. 'I am sick of
life,' he sobbed; 'I cannot be glad and happy, I will not. Make haste
and receive me, thou dear kind earth, and hide me in thy cool,
refreshing arms from the wild beasts that tread over thee and call
themselves men. Oh, God in heaven! how have I deserved that I should
rest upon down and wear silk, that the grape should pour forth her most
precious blood for me, and that all should throng around me and offer
me their homage and love? This poor wretch is better and worthier than
I, and misery is his nurse, and mockery and venomous scorn are the only
sounds that hail his wedding. Every delicacy that is placed before me,
every draught out of my costly goblets, my lying on soft beds, my
wearing gold and rich garments, will be unto me like so many sins, now
that I have beheld how the world hunts down many thousand thousand
wretches, who are hungering after the dry bread that I throw away, and
who never know what a good meal is. Oh, now I can fully understand your
feelings, ye holy pious, whom the world despises and scorns and scoffs
at, who scatter abroad your all, even unto the raiment of your poverty,
and did gird sack-cloth about your loins, and did resolve as beggars to
endure the gibes and the kicks wherewith bru