With these words he took to flight. The poor husbandman was in utter bewilderment.
“What is this?” he asked of his wife. “‘Tis your fan, sweetheart,” she replied, “which the parson had borrowed, and has just brought back.”
Thereupon in a grumbling fashion the goodman rejoined—
“‘Tis a rude way of returning what one has borrowed, for I thought the house was coming down.”
In this way did the parson save himself at the expense of the goodman, who discovered nothing to find fault with except the rudeness with which the fan had been returned.
“The master, ladies, whom the parson served, saved him that time so that he might afterwards possess and torment him the longer.”
“Do not imagine,” said Geburon, “that simple folk are more devoid of craft than we are; (3) nay, they have a still larger share. Consider the thieves and murderers and sorcerers and coiners, and all the people of that sort, whose brains are never at rest; they are all poor and of the class of artisans.”
“I do not think it strange,” said Parlamente, “that they should have more craft than others, but rather that love should torment them amid their many toils, and that so gentle a passion should lodge in hearts so base.”
“Madam,” replied Saffredent, “you know what Master Jehan de Mehun has said—
“Those clad in drugget love no less
Than those that wear a silken dress.” (4)
3 In MS. No. 1520 this passage runs—“that simple and
humble people are,” &c.—L.
4 This is a free rendering of lines 4925-6 of Méon’s
edition of the Roman de la Rose:—
“Aussy bien sont amourettes
Soubz bureau que soubz brunettes.”
Bureau, the same as dure, is a kind of drugget;
brunette was a silken stuff very fashionable among the
French lords and ladies at the time of St. Louis. It was
doubtless of a brown hue.—B, J. and M.