... ful eek of windowes
As flakes falle in grete snowes.[502]
There are those rustling crowds in which Chaucer loved to mix at times, whose murmurs soothed his thoughts, musicians, harpists, jugglers, minstrels, tellers of tales full "of weping and of game," magicians, sorcerers and prophets, curious specimens of humanity. Within the temple, the statues of his literary gods, who sang of the Trojan war: Homer, Dares, and also the Englishman Geoffrey of Monmouth, "English Gaufride," and with them, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Claudian, and Statius. At the command of Fame, the names of the heroes are borne by the wind to the four corners of the world; a burst of music celebrates the deeds of the warriors:
For in fight and blood-shedinge
Is used gladly clarioninge.[503]
Various companies flock to obtain glory; the poet does not forget the group, already formed in his day, of the braggarts who boast of their vices:
We ben shrewes, every wight,
And han delyt in wikkednes,
As gode folk han in goodnes;
And joye to be knowen shrewes ...
Wherfor we preyen yow, a-rowe,
That our fame swich be-knowe
In alle thing right as it is.[504]
As pressing as any, they urgently claim a bad reputation, a favour which the goddess graciously grants them.
Elsewhere we are transported into the house of news, noisy and surging as the public square of an Italian city on a day when "something" has happened. People throng, and crush, and trample each other to see, although there is nothing to see: Chaucer describes from nature. There are assembled numbers of messengers, travellers, pilgrims, sailors, each bearing his bag, full of news, full of lies:
"Nost not thou
That is betid, lo, late or now?"
—"No," quod the other, "tel me what."
And than he tolde him this and that,
And swoor ther-to that hit was sooth—
"Thus hath he seyd"—and "thus he dooth"—
"Thus shal hit be"—"Thus herde I seye"—
"That shal be found"—"That dar I leye."[505]
Truth and falsehood, closely united, form an inseparable body, and fly away together. The least little nothing, whispered in secret in a friend's ear, grows and grows, as in La Fontaine's fable:
As fyr is wont to quikke and go,
From a sparke spronge amis,
Til al a citee brent up is.[506]