Yet, for all this, though it be but lean and, I know,
not well worth a groat, it serveth me sometimes both for dinner
and for supper too. As for the fact that you live of ravine, I can
find no fault in that. You have used it so long that I think you
can do no otherwise, and therefore it would be folly to forbid it
to you--and, to say the truth, against good conscience too. For
live you must, I know, and other craft know you none, and
therefore, as reason is, must you live by that. But yet, you know,
too much is too much, and measure is a merry mean, which I
perceive by your shrift you have never used to keep. And therefore
surely this shall be your penance, that you shall all this year
never pass the price of sixpence at a meal, as near as your
conscience can guess the price."
Their shrift have I told you, as Mother Maud told it to us. But now
serveth for our matter the conscience of them both in the true
performing of their penance. The poor ass after his shrift, when he
waxed an-hungered, saw a sow lie with her pigs, well lapped in new
straw. And he drew near and thought to have eaten of the straw, but
anon his scrupulous conscience began therein to grudge him. For
since his penance was that, for greediness of his good, he should
do nobody else any harm, he thought he might not eat one straw
there lest, for lack of that straw, some of those pigs might hap to
die for cold.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156