If the passage is this one :
The swineherd led him to the manor later
in rags like a foul beggar, old and broken,
propped on a stick. These tatters that he wore
hid him so well that none of us could know him
when he turned up, not even the older men.
We jeered at him, took potshots at him, cursed him.
Daylight and evening in his own great hall
he bore it, patient as a stone.
It might be said that the similies represent an image of battered but unruffled.
this is connected to this person´s suffering but at the same time how it does not disturb him even if he is old.