I
was immediately surrounded by myrmidons, who I doubt not were on the
watch for me. Indeed, I was in no situation to escape, for I had
sprained my ankle in the fall, and could not stand. I was seized as a
housebreaker; and to exonerate myself from a greater crime I had to
accuse myself of a less. I made known who I was, and why I came there.
Alas! the varlets knew it already, and were only amusing themselves at
my expense. My perfidious muse had been playing me one of her slippery
tricks. The old curmudgeon of a father had found my sonnets and
acrostics hid away in holes and corners of his shop; he had no taste
for poetry like his daughter, and had instituted a rigorous though
silent observation. He had moused upon our letters; detected the ladder
of ropes, and prepared everything for my reception. Thus was I ever
doomed to be led into scrapes by the muse. Let no man henceforth carry
on a secret amour in poetry.
The old man's ire was in some measure appeased by the pummelling of my
head, and the anguish of my sprain; so he did not put me to death on
the spot. He was even humane enough to furnish a shutter, on which I
was carried back to the college like a wounded warrior. The porter was
roused to admit me; the college gate was thrown open for my entry; the
affair was blazed abroad the next morning, and became the joke of the
college from the buttery to the hall.
I had leisure to repent during several weeks' confinement by my sprain,
which I passed in translating Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy.
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