'What, is the worthy man as lively as ever?'

'Lively? He nearly drove me into a nervous fever in three days. Up
at four in the morning, always in the most disgustingly good health
and spirits, farming, coursing, shooting, riding over hedge and
ditch after rascally black robbers; preaching, intriguing, borrowing
money; baptizing and excommunicating; bullying that bully,
Andronicus; comforting old women, and giving pretty girls dowries;
scribbling one half-hour on philosophy, and the next on farriery;
sitting up all night writing hymns and drinking strong liquors; off
again on horseback at four the next morning; and talking by the hour
all the while about philosophic abstraction from the mundane tempest.
Heaven defend me fromall two-legged whirlwinds! By the bye, there
was a fair daughter of my nation came back to Alexandria in the same
ship with me, with a cargo that may suit your highness.'

'There are a great many fair daughters of your nation who might suit
me, without any cargo at all.'

'Ah, they have had good practice, the little fools, ever since the
days of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. But I mean old Miriam--you know.
She has been lending Synesius money to fight the black fellows with;
and really it was high time. They had burnt every homestead for
miles through the province. But the daring old girl must do a
little business for herself; so she went off, in the teeth of the
barbarians, right away to the Atlas, bought all their lady
prisoners, and some of their own sons and daughters, too, of them,
for beads and old iron; and has come back with as pretty a cargo of
Lybian beauties as a prefect of good taste could wish to have the