I had a good horse under me, and a comrade in Erling who served me silently with that best of service that is given for love.

I was high in honour with this wonderful young king, for the sake of Ecgbert first, I think, then of King Carl, and lastly because he did indeed seem to like my own company.

I do not think that one could need more to add to pleasure.
I have seen the progresses of kings before this and since, and often it has been that after their passing there has been grumbling, and the hearty hope that the long and greedy train which ate men out of house and home, borrowed their best horses, and otherwise made a little famine in their wake, might never come that way again.

But this Ethelbert left, as it were, a track of happiness across England, in hall and in village, in cot and in forest.

He had ridden with so small a train that he might overburden none of those who had to entertain him on his way, and he stayed nowhere overlong.