up from the ground: who having his face covered in such sort, Let Fortune (quoth he) triumph yet more, let her have her sway, and finish that which shee hath begun. And therewithall I put off one of my garments and covered him, and immediately I brought him to the Baine, and caused him to be anointed, wiped, and the filthy scurfe of his body to be rubbed away; which done, though I were very weary my selfe, yet I led the poore miser to my Inne, where he reposed his body upon a bed, and then I brought him meat and drinke, and so wee talked together: for there we might be merry and laugh at our pleasure, and so we were, untill such time as he (fetching a pittifull sigh from the bottom of his heart, and beating his face in miserable sort), began to say.
THE THIRD CHAPTER
How Socrates in his returne from Macedony to Larissa was spoyled and
robbed, and how he fell acquainted with one Meroe a Witch.
LAS poore miser that I am, that for the onely desire to see a game of
triall of weapons, am fallen into these miseries and wretched snares
of misfortune. For in my returne from Macedonie, wheras I sould all
my wares, and played the Merchant by the space of ten months, a little
before that I came to Larissa, I turned out of the way, to view the
scituation of the countrey there, and behold in the bottom of a deep
valley I was suddenly environed with a company of theeves, who robbed
and spoiled me of such things as I had, and yet would hardly suffer
me to escape. But I beeing in such extremity, in the end was happily
delivered from their hands, and so I fortuned to come to the house of an
old woman that sold wine, called Meroe, who had her tongue sufficiently
instructed to flattery: unto whom I opened the causes of my long
peregrination and careful
