At this moment a snore that sounds like a thunder clap breaks upon the silence from the corner where Goose-Skin is soundly sleeping. Mylio turns around, looks at the juggler, and, smiling at the sight, says to Karvel:
"Brother, I have wholly forgotten to mention my traveling companion to you."
Morise—"Despite his serious mien, your brave companion makes me feel like laughing."
Karvel—"The poor man perhaps feels sad that a minute ago Mylio stopped him short at the best turn of his paraphrase concerning the profound truth that 'the gown does not make the monk.' His discourse was interrupted."
Mylio—"My companion is a juggler, which is the same as saying that his coarse songs, much as they are liked in the taverns, are hardly calculated for delicate ears. I therefore notified Goose-Skin, that is the name that he goes by, that he must keep a watch over his words when near you. Hence his embarrassment, and his obstinate persistence in assuming a venerable appearance. I must pray your indulgence towards him. Yours also, Morise. He is entitled to it by reason of his attachment to me, of which he has given me more than one proof."
Karvel—"All good hearts deserve indulgence and friendship, brother. (Smiling) But I am inclined to reproach you for having made of us scare-crows of virtue and frightening the poor fellow. That is why he is so embarrassed in his conversation and demeanor."
A second snore so prodigious and so much louder than the first escapes from Goose-Skin that he is himself awakened with a start. He rubs his eyes and rolls them around with a scared look; rises abruptly and re-assuming his air of gravity addresses Morise with great affectation of politeness:
"May our compassionate hostess bestow upon me the alms of her mercy for the enormous incongruity of my sleep. But we have been traveling day and night since we left Blois; hence great is my fatigue. Besides, and moreover, in that it causes the vile low appetites to slumber, sleep is of itself a sort of virtue—"
Mylio (interrupting him)—"Why, sister, this fat man who is here boasting to you of the virtuous innocence of his sleep, in that it causes his earthly appetites to slumber—this identical man, who speaks to you in that guise, came near throttling me one day, simply because I woke him up in the middle of a savory dream in which, after seeing Shrove-Tide do battle with Shrove-Tuesday, the one armed with fishes the other with sausages, he was just about to devour both the vanquished and the vanquisher, together with their full accoutrements."
Goose-Skin (in a tone of pitiful reproach to his friend, seeing that Karvel and his wife laugh at Mylio's story)—"Oh, Mylio!"