"You are a Scot," he said. "I never knew any Scot but one, and he was hanged on a tree for robbing the Burgomaster’s coach. I was a lad at school, and I mind me ’twas rare sport. So I have a kindly feeling for your nation, though may God send you a better fate than that one. But what do you seek to learn? Greek? Faugh, there is no Greek worth a straw, save Anacreon, and he is not a patch upon our moderns, on François Villon of Paris, whose soul God rest, and our brave Desportes. Philosophy? Bah! ’Tis all a monstrous fraud. I have sounded all the depths of it, and found them but shallows. Theology? Tush! You will learn more theology in an inn in the Morschstraat than in all the schools. Such are my beliefs. But God has compelled me for my sins to teach the Hellenic tongue to a perverse generation at the small sum of five crowns. We study the Republic of Plato, and I trust you may find some profit. You will dine with me. Nay, I will take no denial. To-night, in my house, I will show you how a quail should be dressed. I have the very devil of a cook, a man who could dress a dry goatskin to your taste. And wine! I have the best that ever came from the Rhineside and escaped the maw of a swinish Teuton. You will come?" I could only escape by promising, which I did with a good grace, for if there was little profit in Master Quellinus’s company, there was much pleasure. CHAPTER II I VISIT MASTER PETER WISHART