or else their fathers were wealthy merchants, living in great mansions hung with arras and lighted with glass windows, rich enough to provoke sumptuary laws and to entertain kings. It is perhaps not surprising that abbesses and prioresses should have found it hard to change the way of life, which they had led before they took the veil and which they saw all around them, when they rode about in the world. Carousings, gay garments, pet animals, frivolous amusements, many guests, superfluous servants and frequent escapes to the freedom of the road, are found not only at the greater houses but even at those which were small and poor. The diverting history of the flea and the gout shows that the luxurious abbess was already a byword early in the thirteenth century.
The lopp (flea) and the gout on a time spake together, and among other talking either of them asked [the] other of their lodging and how they were harboured and where, the night next before. And the flea made a great plaint and said, "I was harboured in the bed of an abbess, betwixt the white sheets upon a soft mattress and there I trowed to have had good harbourage, for her flesh was fat and tender, and thereof I trowed to have had my fill. And first, when I began for to bite her, she began to cry and call on her maidens and when they came, anon they lighted candles and sought me, but I hid me till they were gone. And then I bit her again and she came again and sought me with a light, so that I was fain to leap out of the bed; and all this night I had no rest, but was chased and chevied ['charrid'] and scarce gat away with my life." Then answered the gout and said, "I was harboured in a poor woman's house and anon as I pricked her in her great toe she rose and wetted a great bowl full of clothes and went with them unto the water and stood therein with me up to her knees; so that, what for cold and for holding in the water, I was nearhand slain." And then the flea said, "This night will we change our harbourage"; and so they did. And on the morn they met again and then the flea said unto the gout, "This night have I had good harbourage, for the woman that was thine host yesternight was so weary and so irked, that I was sickerly harboured with her and ate of her blood as mickle as I would." And then answered the gout and said unto the flea: "Thou gavest me good counsel yestereven, for the abbess underneath a gay coverlet, and a soft sheet and a delicate, covered me and nourished me all night. And as soon as I pricked her in her great toe, she wrapped me in furs, and if I hurt her never so ill she let me alone and laid me in the softest part of the bed and troubled me nothing. And therefore as long as she lives I will be harboured with her, for she makes mickle of me." And then said the flea, "I will be harboured with poor folk as long as I live, for there may I be in good rest and eat my full and nobody let [hinder] me"[228].