But enough for the present of politics, Cuthbert; let us now to table.

It is long since we two feasted together; and, indeed, such meals as we took in the Holy Land could scarcely have been called feasts.

A boar's head and a good roasted capon are worthy all the strange dishes that we had there.

I always misdoubted the meat, which seemed to me to smack in flavour of the Saracens, and I never could bring myself to inquire whence that strange food was obtained.

A stoup of English ale, too, is worth all the Cyprus wines, especially when the Cyprus wines are half full of the sand of the desert.