We do not care to continue the blasphemous lies with which he plays upon the mother's tenderness for her dead babe. At length, addressing the sick goodman, he continues:--
"'Thomas, Thomas, so might I ride or go, And by that lord that cleped is St. Ive, N'ere[47] thou our brother, shouldest thou not thrive, In our chapter pray we[48] day and night To Christ that he thee send hele and might[49] Thy body for to welden hastily.' 'God wot,' quoth he, 'I nothing thereof feel, So help me Christ, as I in fewé years Have spended upon divers manner freres Full many a pound, yet fare I never the bet.' The frere answered, 'O Thomas, dost thou so? What need have you diverse friars to seche? What needeth him that hath a perfect leech[50] To seeken other leches in the town? Your inconstancy is your confusion. Hold ye then me, or elles our convent, To pray for you is insufficient? Thomas, that jape is not worth a mite; Your malady is for we have too lite.[51] Ah! give that convent half a quarter of oates; And give that convent four and twenty groats; And give that friar a penny and let him go; Nay, nay, Thomas, it may nothing be so; What is a farthing worth parted in twelve?"
And so he takes up the cue the wife had given him, and reads him a long sermon on anger, quoting Seneca, and giving, for instances, Cambyses and Cyrus, and at length urges him to confession. To this--
"'Nay,' quoth the sick man, 'by Saint Simon, I have been shriven this day by my curate.'
'Give me then of thy gold to make our cloister,'"
and again he proclaims the virtues and morals of his order.
"'For if ye lack our predication,[52] Then goth this world all to destruction. For whoso from this world would us bereave, So God me save, Thomas, by your leave, He would bereave out of this world the sun,'" &c.
And so ends with the ever-recurring burden:--
"'Now, Thomas, help for Sainte Charitee.' This sicke man wax well nigh wood for ire,[53] He woulde that the frere had been a fire, With his false dissimulation;"
and proceeds to play a practical joke upon him, which will not bear even hinting at, but which sufficiently shows that superstition did not prevent men from taking great liberties, expressing the utmost contempt of these men. Moreover,--