“Go to,” said he, “finish: thou hast fetched me a bitter blow; I shall never be whole of it.”
“Yea,” said she, “my man, when I shall be always with thee.”
And she would fain have embraced and kissed him, but he repulsed her.
“The widows,” said she, “swore between his hands never to marry again.”
And Lamme listened to her, lost in his jealous musing.
Calleken, shamefaced, went on:
“He desired,” she said, “to have no penitents save young and beauteous wives or maids: the others he sent back to their own curés. He established an order of devotees, making us all swear to have no other confessors but himself only: I swore it; my companions, more initiate than I, asked me if I was fain to be instructed in the Holy Discipline and the Holy Penance: I wished it. There was at Bruges, at the Stone Cutters’ Quay, by the convent of the Franciscan friars, a house dwelt in by a woman called Calle de Najage, who gave girls instruction and lodging, for a gold carolus by the month: Broer Cornelis could enter her house without being seen to leave his cloister. It was to this house I went, into a little chamber where he was alone: there he ordered me to tell him all my natural and carnal inclinations: at first I dared not; but in the end I gave way, wept, and told him all.”
“Alas!” wept Lamme, “and this swine monk thus received thy sweet confession.”
“He still told me, and this is true, my husband, that above earthly modesty is a celestial modesty, through which we make unto God the sacrifice of our earthly shames, and that thus we avow to our confessors all our secret desires, and are then worthy to receive the Holy Discipline and the Holy Penance.