THE TWO FRIARS.[1]
Two friars once went out on a journey, that is to say, a friar and a lay brother.[2] One day of their journey, when they were far from their convent, the friar said to the lay brother: ‘We fare poorly enough all the days of our life in our convent, let us, for one day of our lives, taste the good things of this world which others enjoy every day.’
‘You know better than I, who am only a poor simple lay brother,’ answered the other, ‘whether such a thing may be done. I don’t mean to say I should not like to have a jolly good dinner for once; but there is the uneasiness of conscience to spoil the feast, and the penance afterwards. I think we had better leave it alone.’
They journeyed on, therefore, and said no more about it that day, but the next, when they were very hungry after a long walk through the cold mountain air, the scent of the viands preparing in the inn as they drew near brought the subject of yesterday’s conversation to their minds again, and the friar said to the lay brother: ‘You know even our rule says that when we are journeying we cannot live as we do in our convent; we must eat and drink whatever we find in the places to which we are sent; moreover, some relaxation is allowed for the restoration of the body under the fatigues of the journey. Now, if we come, as it has often happened to us, to a poor little mountain village, where scarcely a wholesome crust of bread is to be found, to be washed down with a glass of sour wine, we have to take it for all our dinner, and eat it with thanksgiving. Therefore why, now, when we come to a place where the fare is less scanty, even as by the odours we perceive is the case here, should we not also take what is found ready, and eat it with thanksgiving?’
‘What you say seems right and just enough,’ said the lay brother, not at all sorry to have his scruples so speciously explained away. ‘But there is one thing you have not thought of. It is all very well to say we will eat and drink this and that, but how are we poor friars, who possess nothing, to command the delicacies which are smoking round the fire, and which have to be paid for by well-stored purses?’
‘Oh! that is not the difficulty,’ replied the friar; ‘leave that to me.’
By this time they had reached the threshold of the inn, and, taking his companion’s last feeble resistance for consent, the friar strutted into the eating-room with so bold an air that the lay brother hardly knew him for the humble religious he had been accompanying anon.
‘Ho! here! John, Peter, Francis, whatever you are called!’
‘Francesco, to your service,’ replied the host humbly, thinking by his commanding tone he must be some son of a great family.