"The sweet harmony (of its creaking and whistling) like love, invited us to forget our misfortunes, the times and the seasons, and to accompany the sounds with song. Florio (recalling his days of love) sang _Dove senza me dolce mia vita_, and the Nolan replied with _Saracin dolente_ or _Femenil ingegno_, and the like; and so little by little we advanced as the barque permitted. Although worms and age had reduced it to something like cork, it seemed from its _festina lente_ all of lead, and the arms of the two ancients worn out. So with much time we made little way, and before we had covered a third of the distance--a little beyond the place they call the Temple--our old fathers, instead of hurrying, ran their prow alongside the shore. To the Nolan asking if they wished a little breathing time, they answered that they were not going any further, for this was their stance. In conclusion, they would not budge for us, and when we had paid them and thanked them (there is nothing else to do when you suffer a wrong from one of these _canaille_), they showed us the direct road for getting on to the street. Now, oh for your help, Maphelina, muse of Merlin! That was a road which commenced in a black mud, from which there was no escape even by good luck. The Nolan, who had studied and practised in the schools more than we, bade us follow him through a passage, that he thought to see, filthy though it was. But he had not ceased speaking when he was planted in the mire so firmly that he could not drag out his limbs, and so with mutual help we went through the midst of it, hoping that the purgatory would be of short duration; but by unjust and hard fate he and we found ourselves engulfed in a slimy passage, that, just as if it were the 'field of jealousy' or the 'garden of delights,' was bounded on this side and on that by good walls, and because there was no light to guide us we could not distinguish between the way we had come and the way we ought to go, hoping at every step for the end." ... "Higher up the street we found a lava which on one side left a stony place where we could walk dry; step by step we stumbled like drunk men--and not without danger of breaking a head or a leg. To make a long story short at last the Elysian fields appeared, viz. the broad, ordinary street--and then from the houses we discovered we were about twenty steps from the place where we had set out to find the boatman, and not far from the Nolan's rooms!" The temptation to give up the expedition was overcome, and after sundry adventures with apprentices, servitors, and bravos of the gentle class, they arrived safely at Fulke Greville's, where supper was already in progress. [Sidenote: Hostility in England.]