You have used it so long that I think you
can do no otherwise, and therefore it would be folly to forbid it
to you--and, to say the truth, against good conscience too. For
live you must, I know, and other craft know you none, and
therefore, as reason is, must you live by that. But yet, you know,
too much is too much, and measure is a merry mean, which I
perceive by your shrift you have never used to keep. And therefore
surely this shall be your penance, that you shall all this year
never pass the price of sixpence at a meal, as near as your
conscience can guess the price."

Their shrift have I told you, as Mother Maud told it to us. But now
serveth for our matter the conscience of them both in the true
performing of their penance. The poor ass after his shrift, when he
waxed an-hungered, saw a sow lie with her pigs, well lapped in new
straw. And he drew near and thought to have eaten of the straw, but
anon his scrupulous conscience began therein to grudge him. For
since his penance was that, for greediness of his good, he should
do nobody else any harm, he thought he might not eat one straw
there lest, for lack of that straw, some of those pigs might hap to
die for cold. So he held still his hunger until someone brought him
food. But when he was about to fall to it, then fell he yet into a
far further scruple. For then it came in his mind that he should
yet break his penance if he should eat any of that either, since he
was commanded by his ghostly father that he should not, for his own
food, hinder any other beast. For he thought that if he ate not
that food, some other beast might hap to have it. And so should he,
by the eating of it, peradventure hinder another. And thus stayed
he still fasting till, when he told the cause, his ghostly father
came and informed him better, and then he cast off that scruple and
fell mannerly to his meal, and was a right honest ass many a fair
day after.

The wolf now, coming from shrift clean absolved from his sins,
went about to do as a certain shrewish wife once told her husband
that she would do, when she came from shrift. "Be merry, man,"
quoth she now, "for this day, I thank God, I was well shriven. And
I purpose now therefore to leave off all mine old shrewishness and
begin even afresh!"

VINCENT: Ah, well, uncle, can you report her so? That word I
heard her speak, but she said it in sport to make her goodman
laugh.

ANTHONY: Indeed, it seemed she spoke it half in sport.