are undone.  Ha, poor souls!  What’s the matter? said they.  What shall we have, said he, to drink in these deserts?  For Julian Augustus with his whole army died there for thirst, as they say.  We have already, said they, given order for that.  In the Syriac sea you have nine thousand and fourteen great ships laden with the best wines in the world.  They arrived at Port Joppa.  There they found two-and-twenty thousand camels and sixteen hundred elephants, which you shall have taken at one hunting about Sigelmes, when you entered into Lybia; and, besides this, you had all the Mecca caravan.  Did not they furnish you sufficiently with wine?  Yes, but, said he, we did not drink it fresh.  By the virtue, said they, not of a fish, a valiant man, a conqueror, who pretends and aspires to the monarchy of the world, cannot always have his ease.  God be thanked that you and your men are come safe and sound unto the banks of the river Tigris.  But, said he, what doth that part of our army in the meantime which overthrows that unworthy swillpot Grangousier?  They are not idle, said they.  We shall meet with them by-and-by.  They shall have won you Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Hainault, Brabant, Artois, Holland, Zealand; they have passed the Rhine over the bellies of the Switzers and lansquenets, and a party of these hath subdued Luxembourg, Lorraine, Champagne, and Savoy, even to Lyons, in which place they have met with your forces returning from the naval conquests of the Mediterranean sea; and have rallied again in Bohemia, after they had plundered and sacked Suevia, Wittemberg, Bavaria, Austria, Moravia, and Styria.  Then they set fiercely together upon Lubeck, Norway, Swedeland, Rie, Denmark, Gitland, Greenland, the Sterlins, even unto the frozen sea.  This done, they conquered the Isles of Orkney and subdued Scotland, England, and Ireland.  From thence sailing through the sandy sea and by the Sarmates, they have vanquished and overcome Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkeyland, and are now at Constantinople.  Come, said Picrochole, let us go join with them quickly, for I will be Emperor of Trebizond also.  Shall we not kill all these dogs, Turks and Mahometans?  What a devil should we do else? said they.  And you shall give their goods and lands to such as shall have served you honestly.  Reason, said he, will have it so, that is but just.  I give unto you the Caramania, Suria, and all the Palestine.  Ha, sir, said they, it is out of your goodness; gramercy, we thank you.  God grant you may always prosper.  There was there present at that time an old gentleman well experienced in the wars, a stern soldier, and who had been in many great hazards, named Echephron, who, hearing this discourse, said, I do greatly doubt that all this enterprise will be like the tale or interlude of the pitcher full of milk wherewith a shoemaker made himself rich in conceit; but, when the pitcher was broken, he had not