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 sentinel, 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 sentinel 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 sentinel’s hand, and passed on.
It grieves me, said the sentinel, 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 sentinel, 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 sentinel.