Thereupon the colonel questioned him further; but the fellow knew no more save that I could play the lute well, and that I had been captured outside the walls at Hanau by the Croats of Colonel Corpes' regiment, and, moreover, that the said commandant had been vexed at losing me; for I was a right clever fool. So then the colonel's wife sent to another colonel's wife that could play well upon the lute, and therefore always had one by her, and begged her for the loan of it: which, when it came, she handed to me with the command that I should play. But my view was they should first give me to eat; for an empty stomach accorded not well with a fat one, such as the lute had. So this was done, and when I had eaten my fill and drunk a good draught of Zerbst beer, I let them hear what I could do both with my voice and with the lute: and therewithal I talked gibberish, all that first came into my head, so that I easily persuaded the folk to believe I was of the quality that my apparel represented. Then the colonel asked me whither I would go; and I answering 'twas all one to me, we agreed thereupon that I should stay with him and be his page. Yet would he know where my asses' ears had gone. "Yea," said I to myself, "an thou knewest where they were: they would fit thee well enough." Yet was I clever enough to say naught of their properties, for all my worldly goods lay in them. Now in a brief space I was well known to all both in the Emperor's and the Elector's camp, but specially among the ladies, who would deck my hood, my sleeves, and my short-cut ears with ribbons of all colours, so that I verily believe that certain fops copied therefrom the fashion of to-day. But all the money that was given me by the officers, that I liberally gave away and spent all to the last farthing, drinking it away with jolly companions in beer of Hamburg and Zerbst, which liquors pleased me well: and besides this, in all places wheresoever I came there was plenty of chance of spunging. But when my colonel procured for me a lute of my own (for he trusted to have me ever with him), then I could no longer rove hither and thither in the two camps, but he appointed for me a governor who should look after me, and I to obey him. And this was a man after mine own heart, for he was quiet, discreet, learned, of sufficient conversation yet not too much, and (which was the chief matter), exceeding God-fearing, well read, and full of all arts and sciences. At night I must sleep in his tent, and by day I might not go out of his sight: he had once been a counsellor and minister of a prince, and indeed a rich man; but being by the Swedes utterly ruined, his wife dead, and his only son unable to continue his studies for want of money, and therefore serving as a muster-roll clerk in the Saxon army, he took service with this my colonel, and was content to serve as a lackey, to wait until the dangerous chances of war on the banks of the Elbe should change and so