big as bowling balls, and asked him wherefore he came so
late. "Forsooth, Father Reynard," quoth he, "I must needs tell you
the truth--I come, you know, for that. I dared not come sooner for
fear lest you would, for my gluttony, have given me in penance to
fast some part of this Lent." "Nay, nay," quoth Father Fox, "I am
not so unreasonable, for I fast none of it myself. For I may say
to thee, son, between us twain here in confession, it is no
commandment of God, this fasting, but an invention of man. The
priests make folk fast, and then put them to trouble about the
moonshine in the water, and do but make folk fools. But they shall
make me no such fool, I warrant thee, son, for I ate flesh all
this Lent, myself. Howbeit indeed, because I will not be occasion
of slander, I ate it secretly in my chamber, out of sight of all
such foolish brethren as for their weak scrupulous conscience
would wax offended by it. And so would I counsel you to do."
"Forsooth, Father Fox," quoth the wolf, "and so, thank God, I do,
as near as I can. For when I go to my meal, I take no other
company with me but such sure brethren as are of mine own nature,
whose consciences are not weak, I warrant you, but their stomachs
are as strong as mine." "Well, then, no matter," quoth Father Fox.
But when he heard afterward, by his confession, that he was so
great a ravener that he devoured and spent sometimes so much
victuals at a meal that the price of them would well keep some
poor man with his wife and children almost all the week, then he
prudently reproved that point in him, and preached him a sermon of
his own temperance. For he never used, he said, to pass the value
of sixpence at a meal--no, nor even that much, "For when I bring
home a goose," quoth he, "it is not out of the poulterer's shop,
where folk find them with their feathers ready plucked and see
which is the fattest, and yet for sixpence buy and choose the
best; but out of the housewife's house, at first hand, which can
supply them somewhat cheaper, you know, than the poulterer can.
Nor yet can I be suffered to see them plucked, and stand and
choose them by day, but am fain by night to take one at adventure.
And when I come home, I am fain to do the labour to pluck it
myself too. Yet, for all this, though it be but lean and, I know,
not well worth a groat, it serveth me sometimes both for dinner
and for supper too. As for the fact that you live of ravine, I can
find no fault in that.