"I will tell you a story of your king Ulysses and myself. If there is ever
a time when a man may have leave to tell his own stories, it is when he
has drunken a little too much. Strong liquor driveth the fool, and moves
even the heart of the wise, moves and impels him to sing and to dance, and
break forth in pleasant laughters, and perchance to prefer a speech too
which were better kept in. When the heart is open, the tongue will be
stirring. But you shall hear. We led our powers to ambush once under the
walls of Troy."

The herdsmen crowded about him eager to hear anything which related to
their king Ulysses and the wars of Troy, and thus he went on:

"I remember, Ulysses and Menelaus had the direction of that enterprise,
and they were pleased to join me with them in the command. I was at that
time in some repute among men, though fortune has played me a trick since,
as you may perceive. But I was somebody in those times, and could do
something. Be that as it may, a bitter freezing night it was, such a night
as this, the air cut like steel, and the sleet gathered on our shields
like crystal. There was some twenty of us, that lay close crouched down
among the reeds and bulrushes that grew in the moat that goes round the
city. The rest of us made tolerable shift, for every man had been careful
to bring with him a good cloak or mantle to wrap over his armour and keep
himself warm; but I, as it chanced, had left my cloak behind me, as not
expecting that the night would prove so cold, or rather I believe because
I had at that time a brave suit of new armour on, which, being a soldier,
and having some of the soldier's vice about me--_vanity_--I was not
willing should be hidden under a cloak; but I paid for my indiscretion
with my sufferings, for with the inclement night, and the wet of the ditch
in which we lay, I was well-nigh frozen to death; and when I could endure
no longer, I jogged Ulysses who was next to me, and had a nimble ear, and