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“Six crowns, gentlemen,” replied the host, holding out his hand.

“I cannot permit myself to be entertained by you alone, Viscount,” said the third student, who was from Anjou, and as artful as a woman in love.

“Neither can I,” said the Burgundian.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” replied the Picardian “you are jesting. I am yours to command.”

“Sambreguoy!” cried he of Anjou. “You will not let us pay three times; our host would not suffer it.”

“Well then,” said the Burgundian, “whichever of us shall tell the worst tale shall justify the landlord.”

“Who will be the judge?” asked the Picardian, dropping his twelve sols to the bottom of his pocket.

“Pardieu! our host. He should be capable, seeing that he is a man of taste,” said he of Anjou. “Come along, great chef, sit you down, drink, and lend us both your ears. The audience is open.”

Thereupon the host sat down, but not until he had poured out a gobletful of wine.

“My turn first,” said the Anjou man. “I commence.”

“In our Duchy of Anjou, the country people are very faithful servants to our Holy of Catholic religion, and none of them will lose his portion of paradise for lack of doing penance or killing a heretic. If a professor of heresy passed that way, he quickly found himself under the grass, without knowing whence his death had proceeded. A good man of Larze, returning one night from his evening prayer to the wine flasks of Pomme-de-Pin, where he had left his understanding and memory, fell into a ditch full of water near his house, and found he was up to his neck. One of the neighbours finding him shortly afterwards nearly frozen, for it was winter time, said jokingly to him–

“‘Hulloa! What are you waiting for there?’

“‘A thaw’, said the tipsy fellow, finding himself held by the ice.

“Then Godenot, like a good Christian, released him from his dilemma, and opened the door of the house to him, out of respect to the wine, which is lord of this country. The good man then went and got into the bed of the maid-servant, who was a young and pretty wench. The old bungler, bemuddled with wine, went ploughing in the wrong land, fancying all the time it was his wife by his side, and thanking her for the youth and freshness she still retained. On hearing her husband, the wife began to cry out, and by her terrible shrieks the man was awakened to the fact that he was not in the road to salvation, which made the poor labourer sorrowful beyond expression.

“‘Ah! said he; ‘God has punished me for not going to vespers at Church.’

“And he began to excuse himself as best he could, saying, that the wine had muddled his understanding, and getting into his own bed he kept repeating to his good wife, that for his best cow he would not have had this sin upon his conscience.

“‘My dear’, said she, ‘go and confess the first thing tomorrow morning, and let us say no more about it.’

“The good man trotted to confessional, and related his case with all humility to the rector of the parish, who was a good old priest, capable of being up above, the slipper of the holy foot.

“‘An error is not a sin,’ said he to the penitent. ‘You will fast tomorrow, and be absolved.’

“‘Fast!–with pleasure,’ said the good man. ‘That does not mean go without drink.’

“‘Oh!’ replied the rector, ‘you must drink water, and eat nothing but a quarter of a loaf and an apple.’

“Then the good man, who had no confidence in his memory, went home, repeating to himself the penance ordered. But having loyally commenced with a quarter of a loaf and an apple, he arrived at home, saying, a quarter of apples, and a loaf.

“Then, to purify his soul, he set about accomplishing his fast, and his good woman having given him a loaf from the safe, and unhooked a string of apples from the beam, he set sorrowfully to work. As he heaved a sigh on taking the last mouthful of bread hardly knowing where to put it, for he was full to the chin, his wife remonstrated with him, that God did not desire the death of a sinner, and that for lack of putting a crust of bread in his belly, he would not be reproached for having put things in their wrong places.