As for the jolly rustics that were jogging their wits away with such delightful gravity, but little time was given me to admire them ere I also was snatched into the ring, and found brown eyes dwelling with mine, and a hand like lettuces in the dog-days.  Round and about we skipped in the golden straw, amidst treasuries of hay, puffing and spinning.  And the quiet lightnings quivered between the beams, and the monstrous “Ah!” of the thunder submerged the pipe’s sweetness.  Till at last all began to gasp and blow indeed, and the nodding Fool to sip, and sip, as if in extremis over his mouthpiece.  Then we rested awhile, with a medley of shrill laughter and guffaws, while the rain streamed lightning-lit upon the trees and tore the clouds to tatters.

With some little circumstance my traveller picked his way to me, and with a grave civility bowed me a sort of general welcome.  Whereupon ensued such wit and banter as made me thankful when the opening impudence of a kind of jig set the heels and the petticoats of the company tossing once more.  We danced the lightning out, and piped the thunder from the skies.  And by then I was so faint with fasting, and so deep in love with at least five young country faces, that I scarcely knew head from heels; still less, when a long draught of a kind of thin, sweet ale had mounted to its sphere.

Away we all trooped over the flashing fields, noisy as jays in the fresh, sweet air, some to their mowing, some to their milking, but more, indeed, I truly suspect, to that exquisite Nirvana from which the tempest’s travail had aroused them.  I waved my hand, striving in vain to keep my eyes on one blest, beguiling face of all that glanced behind them.  But, she gone, I turned into the rainy lane once more with my new acquaintance, discreeter, but not less giddy, it seemed, than I.

We had not far to go—­past a meadow or two, a low green wall, a black fish-pool—­and soon the tumbledown gables of a house came into view.  My companion waved his open fingers at the crooked casements and peered into my face.

“Ah!” he said, “we will talk, we will talk, you and I:  I view it in your eye, sir—­clear and full and profound—­such ever goes with eloquence.  ’Tis my delight.  What are we else than beasts?—­beasts that perish?  I never tire; I never weary;—­give me to dance and to sing, but ever to talk:  then am I at ease.  Heaven is just.  Enter, sir—­enter!”

He led me by a shady alley into his orchard, and thence to a stable, where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly bottle of hay.  And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a staircase into an upper chamber.  This chamber was raftered, its walls hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that flowed across the forests far away to the west.