It little concerns any man to know how I slowly recovered my health after certain failings back into the shadow of death.

Therefore I need not tell how I was physicked, and bled, and how I drew on from a diet of milk to one of fish, and so to a meal of chicken's flesh, till at last I could sit, wrapped up in many cloaks, on a seat in the garden, below a great mulberry tree.

In all this weary time I knew little, and for long cared less, as to what went on in the world and the wars.

But so soon as I could speak it was of Elliot that I devised, with my kind nurse, Charlotte Boucher, the young daughter of Jacques Boucher, the Duke's treasurer, in whose house I lay.

She was a fair lass, and merry of mood, and greatly hove up my heart to fight with my disease.