arse yet subtle
minds, set school fulminating against school, and put all Christendom in
an uproar. We formed ourselves into two opposing camps. One camp
maintained that before there were apples there was the Apple; that
before there were popinjays there was the Popinjay; that before there
were lewd and greedy monks there was the Monk, Lewdness and Greed; that
before there were feet and before there were posteriors in this world
the kick in the posterior must have had existence for all eternity in
the bosom of God. The other camp replied that, on the contrary, apples
gave man the idea of the apple; popinjays the idea of the popinjay;
monks the idea of the monk, greed and lewdness, and that the kick in the
posterior existed only after having been duly given and received. The
players grew heated and came to fisticuffs. I was an adherent of the
second party, which satisfied my reason better, and which was, in fact,
condemned by the Council of Soissons.

"Meanwhile, not content with fighting among themselves, vassal against
suzerain, suzerain against vassal, the great lords took it into their
heads to go and fight in the East. They said, as well as I can remember,
that they were going to deliver the tomb of the son of God.

"They said so, but their adventurous and covetous spirit excited them to
go forth and seek lands, women, slaves, gold, myrrh, and incense. These
expeditions, need it be said, proved disastrous; but our thick-headed
compatriots brought back with them the knowledge of certain crafts and
oriental arts and a taste for luxury. Henceforth we had less difficulty
in making them work and in putting them in the way of inventions. We
built wonderfully beautiful churches, with daringly pierced arches,
lancet-shaped windows, high towers, thousands of pointed spires, which,
rising in the sky towards Iahveh, bore at one and the same time the
prayers of the humble and the threats of the proud, for it was all as
much our doing as the work of men's hands; and it was a strange sight to
see men and demons working together at a cathedral, each one sawing,
polishing, collecting stones, graving, on capital and on cornice,
nettles, thorns, thistles, wild parsley, and wild strawberry,--carving
faces of virgins and saints and weird figures of serpents, fishes with
asses' heads, apes scratching their buttocks; each one, in fact, putting
his own particular talent,--mocking, sublime, grotesque, modest, or
audacious,--into the work