My sickness hard to cure,
My sore discomfort is not less.
Heart-ache I can’t endure.”
To this his wife responds indifferently, although the miller persists in asking for a bottle of good wine, saying that his “reins and belly need the supreme consolation of the bottle.” The wife obstinately refuses her husband the wine, remarking that he cannot “repair his stomach by filling the belly;” but, instead, she sends for the priest, who is, moreover, her lover, and carries on a flirtation with the holy man in the presence of her husband, for the purpose of making the invalid rise from his sick-bed; but, thinking his end near, the miller demands that he shall be permitted to die in the faith, or “mourir catholiquement.” He confesses to the priest, avowing all his thefts, his frauds, his falsification and amours, and is prepared to render his soul.
But the miller has absorbed some of the popular ideas of his day, professed by certain philosophers of the time; he believes that, at the moment of death, the soul of man escapes by his anus, and warns the priest to absolve him from his sins, saying:
“Mon ventre trop se determine.
Helas! Je ne scay que je face;
Ostez vous!”
The priest answers:
“Ha! sauf vostre grace!”