The present bischop of Poictiers is a reasonable, learned man, they say. On a tyme a preist came to gett collation from him, the bischop, according to the custome, demanding of him if he know Latin, if he had learned his Rhetorick, read his philosophy, studied the scooll Divinity and the Canon Law, etc., the preist replied quau copois,[142], which in the Dialect of bas Poictou (which differes from that they speak in Gascoigne, from that in Limosin, from that in Bretagne, tho all 4 be but bastard French) signifies une peu. The bischop thought it a very doulld[143] answer, and that he bit to be but a ignorant fellow. He begines to try him on some of them, but try him wheir he will he findes him better wersed then himselfe. Thus he dismissed him wt a ample commendation; and severall preists, efter hearing of this, when he demanded if they had studied sick and sick things, they ware sure to reply cacopois. He never examined them further, crying, go your wayes, go your wayes, they that answers cacopois are weill qualified.
[142] Perhaps quelque peu.
[143] Stupid, from doule, a fool.
We have sein sewerall English Books translated in French, as the Practise of Piety, the late kings [Greek: eikon basilikae], Sidneyes Arcadia, wt others.
We have sein the plume whilk they dry and make the plumdamy[144] of.
[144] Dried plum, prune.
The habit of the Carmelites is just opposite to that of the Jacobines,[145] who goe wt a long white robe beneath and a black above. The Carmes wt a black beneath and a white above. The Augustines are all in black, the Fullions all in white.
[145] Jacobins, Dominicans, so called from the church of St. Jacques in
Paris, granted to the order, near which they built their convent.
The convent gave its name to the club of the Jacobins at the
French Revolution, which had its quarters there.
Its very rare to sy any of the women religious, they are so keipt up, yet on a tyme as I was standing wt some others heir in the mouth of a litle lane their came furth 2 nunnes, in the name of the rest, wt a litle box demanding our charity. Each of us gave them something: the one of them was not a lass of 20 years.
Mr. Daillé loves fisch dearly, and generally, I observe, that amongs 10 Frenchmen their sall be 9 that wil præfer fisch to flech, and thinks the one much more delicat to the pallate then the other. The fisch they make greatest cont of are that they call the sardine, which seimes to be our sandell, and which we saw first at Saumur, and that they call le solle, which differs not from our fluck[146] but seimes to be the same. The French termes it le perdrix de la mer, the patridge of the sea, because as the pertridge is the most delicious of birds, so it of fisches. Mr. Daillé and his wife perceaving that we cared not for any sort of fisches, after they would not have fisches once in the moneth.