Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

The Bishop, reading nothing of what was going on in the poor priest's mind, now bent toward him courteously and sought to fix his attention upon the luxury and elegance of the banquet. He deprecated to him the fact that, as it was a fast-day, he was unable to offer more bountiful hospitality. Annys could scarce restrain a smile at the ingenuity of the cook, who certainly might well have shone in a clerkly career, so well did he know how to obey the letter and ignore the spirit.

For, first there was served to each guest, on being seated, a quarter of a pint of grenache. Then came roast apples with white sugar-plums on them, roasted figs, sorrel, watercress, and rosemary. Then a soup made of trout, tenches, white herring, fresh-water eels, whiting, almonds, ginger, saffron, cinnamon powder, and sweetmeats. This was followed by soles and salmon for salt-water fish; and pike with roe, carps, and breams for fresh-water fish should they be preferred. Besides all this there were side dishes of oranges and apples, and rice with fried almonds upon it.

Fast-day forsooth! Was there not epitomized herein the very condition into which the Church of Christ had fallen, its true life blighted in the killing frost of ritualism?

When the last sugar-plum had been passed by the servitors, and the chairs and benches were shoved somewhat back from the boards, and all sat about in easy postures, the harpist up in the beautiful oriole played sweet music. A youth with a treble of thrilling sweetness sang to them of the uncertainty of this life, for the Bishop permitted no ribald love songs to be sung in his hall. Then there followed a hymn to Jesus Christ:—

"With noble meat He nourished my kind

for with His flesh He would me feed.

A better food may no man find,

for to lasting life it will us lead."

After this came a psalm of David, set to a quaint and plaintive air; but the Bishop, now perceiving that his guest was ill at ease, summoned a servant, and throwing him a purse of gold to be divided among the minstrels, bade Annys follow him to his solar.