The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works by Thomas Nashe

Author:Thomas Nashe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-11-04T04:00:00+00:00

Her dainty limbs tinsel her silk soft sheets,

Her rose-crown’d cheeks eclipse my dazzled sight;

Oh glass, with too much joy my thoughts thou greets,

And yet thou showest me day but by twilight:

I’ll kiss thee for the kindness I have felt,

Her lips one kiss would unto nectar melt.

Though the Emperor’s Court and the extraordinary edifying company of Cornelius Agrippa might have been arguments of weight to have arrested us a little longer there, yet Italy still stuck as a great mote in my master’s eye; he thought he had travelled no further than Wales till he had took survey of that country which was such a curious moulder of wits.

To cut off blind ambages178 by the highway-side, we made a long stride and got to Venice in short time; where having scarce looked about us, a precious supernatural pander, apparelled in all points like a gentleman, and having half-a-dozen several languages in his purse, entertained us in our own tongue very peraphrastically and eloquently, and maugre179 all other pretended acquaintance would have us in a violent kind of courtesy to be the guests of his appointment. His name was Petro de Campo Frego, a notable practitioner in the policy of bawdry. The place whither he brought us was a pernicious courtesan’s house named Tabitha the Temptress’s, a wench that could set as civil a face on it as chastity’s first martyr, Lucretia. What will you conceit to be in any saint’s house that was there to seek? Books, pictures, beads, crucifixes, why, there was a haberdasher’s shop of them in every chamber. I warrant you should not see one set of her neckercher perverted or turned awry, not a piece of a hair displaced. On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found; her pillows bare out as smooth as a groaning wife’s belly, and yet she was a Turk and an infidel, and had more doings than all her neighbours besides. Us for our money they used like emperors. I was master, as you heard before, and my master, the Earl, was but as my chief man whom I made my companion. So it happened (as iniquity will out at one time or other) that she, perceiving my expenses had no more vents than it should have, fell in with my supposed servant, my man, and gave him half a promise of marriage if he would help to make me away, that she and he might enjoy the jewels and wealth that I had.

The indifficulty of the condition thus she explained unto him. Her house stood upon vaults, which in two hundred years together were never searched; who came into her house none took notice of. His fellow servants that knew of his master’s abode there should be all dispatched by him, as from his master, into sundry parts of the city about business, and, when they returned, answer should be made that he lay not there any more but had removed to Padua since their departure and thither they must follow him.

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