At this point his neighbour Don Amor or Love comes to visit the chagrined Archpriest, and is angrily reproached for promising much and doing little beyond enfeebling man’s mental and physical powers—a point exemplified by a Spanish variant of that most indecorous fableau, the Valet aux douze femmes. After listening to fable upon fable, introduced to prove that he is in alliance with the Seven Deadly Sins, Love gently explains to the Archpriest that he is wrong to flare into a heat, that he has attempted to fly too high, that fine ladies are not for him, that he should study the Art of Love as expounded by Pamphilus and Ovid, that beauty is more than rank, and that he should enlist the services of an ingratiating old woman. Love quotes the tale of the two idlers who wished to marry, supplements this with the obscene story of Don Pitas Payas, and recommends the Archpriest to put money in his purse when he goes a-wooing. Part of this passage may be quoted in Gibson’s rendering:—
O money meikle doth, and in luve hath meikle fame,
It maketh the rogue a worthy wight, a carle of honest name,
It giveth a glib tongue to the dumb, snell feet unto the lame,
And he who lacketh both his hands will clutch it all the same.
A man may be a gawkie loon, and eke a hirnless brute,
But money makes him gentleman, and learnit clerk to boot;
For as his money bags do swell, so waxeth his repute,
But he whose purse has naught intill’t, must wear a beggar’s suit.
With money in thy fist thou need’st never lack a friend,0