Two stanzas with the same refrain follow. Then Barbarus turns to the image and lays on it the blame in two additional stanzas with the threatening French refrain:
“Ha! Nicholax,
se ne me rent ma chose, tu ol comparras.”
(If you don’t give me back my things, I’ll make you pay for it.)
Barbarus then takes up a whip and vents his feelings in two additional stanzas of the same sort, the form and spirit of which Professor Gayley has admirably caught in English[72]:
By God, I swear to you
Unless you “cough up” true,
You thief, I’ll beat you blue,
I will, no fear!
So hand me back my stuff that I put here!
The amount of whipping and other stage “business” to accompany this recitative might safely be trusted to choir boy impromptu. The Latin text of the play at this point gives the following simple directions: “Then St. Nicholas shall go to the thieves and say to them:”
In four Latin stanzas he tells the thieves that he has been whipped because he cannot restore the things left in his charge, and threatens:
“Quod si non feceritis
suspensi eras eritis
crucis in patibulo;
vestra namque turpia,
vestra latrocinia,
nuntiabo populo.”
(If you don’t do this, you will be hanged to-morrow on a gibbet, for your misdeeds and thievery, I will proclaim abroad.)