He kempte hise lokkes brode, and made him gay.
If on a feast-day they play a Mystery on the public place before the church, he gets the part of Herod allotted to him: who could resist a person so much in view? Alison resists, however, not out of virtue, but because she prefers Nicholas. She does not require fine phrases to repel Absolon's advances; village-folk are not so ceremonious:
Go forth thy wey, or I wol caste a ston.
Blows abound in stories of that kind, and the personages go off with "their back as limp as their belly," as we read in one of the narratives from which Chaucer drew his inspiration.
Next to these great scenes of noise there are little familiar scenes, marvellously observed, and described to perfection; scenes of home-life that might tempt the pencil of a Dutch painter; views of the mysterious laboratory where the alchemist, at once duped and duping, surrounded with retorts, "cucurbites and alembykes," his clothes burnt to holes, seeks to discover the philosopher's stone. They heat, they pay great attention, they stir the mixture;
The pot to-breketh, and farewel! al is go!
Then they discuss; it is the fault of the pot, of the fire, of the metal; it is just as I thought;
Som seyde, it was long on the fyr-making,
Som seyde, nay! it was on the blowing....
"Straw," quod the thridde, "ye been lewede and nyce,
It was nat tempred as it oghte be."
A fourth discovers a fourth cause: "Our fyr was nat maad of beech." What wonder, with so many causes for a failure, that it failed? We will begin over again.[536]
Or else, we have representations of those interested visits that mendicant friars paid to the dying. The friar, low, trivial, hypocritical, approaches: