Verus est, respondit uxor—

Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum olet—

Carbunculus inest, ait uxor.

Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes.

Vivus est ait illa,—et si ipsa vivam tangam.

Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore usque ad—Quodnam tempus? illico respondit illa.

Minimo tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) usque ad illam horam—Quam horam? ait illa—Nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec pervenio ad—Quem locum,—obsecro? ait illa—Peregrinus nil respondens mulo conscenso discessit.

Slawkenbergius’s Tale

It was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day, in the latter end of the month of August, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered the town of Strasburg.

He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that he had been at the Promontory of Noses—was going on to Frankfort—and should be back again at Strasburg that day month, in his way to the borders of Crim Tartary.

The centinel looked up into the stranger’s face—he never saw such a Nose in his life!

—I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the stranger—so slipping his wrist out of the loop of a black ribbon, to which a short scymetar was hung, he put his hand into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the fore part of his cap with his left hand, as he extended his right—he put a florin into the centinel’s hand, and passed on.

It grieves, me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandy- legg’d drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard—he cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be able to get a scabbard to fit it in all Strasburg.—I never had one, replied the stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to his cap as he spoke—I carry it, continued he, thus—holding up his naked scymetar, his mule moving on slowly all the time—on purpose to defend my nose.

It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel.

—’Tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-legg’d drummer—’tis a nose of parchment.

As I am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose, said the centinel, like my own.

—I heard it crackle, said the drummer.

By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed.

What a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not both touch it!

At the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the centinel and the drummer—was the same point debating betwixt a trumpeter and a trumpeter’s wife, who were just then coming up, and had stopped to see the stranger pass by.

Benedicity!—What a nose! ’tis as long, said the trumpeter’s wife, as a trumpet.