desolation; he came out of the tribe of Dan, of whom it is written:
'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' Soon shall
return to the earth the prophets Elijah and Enoch, Moses, Jeremiah and
Saint John the Evangelist; and soon shall dawn that day of wrath which
shall grind the age in a mill and beat it in a mortar, according to
the testimony of David and the Sibyl."[1402] Then the good Brother
concluded by calling upon them to repent, to do penance and to
renounce empty riches. In short, in the opinion of the clerks, he was
a man of worship and an orator. His sermons produced more devoutness
among the people, it was thought, than those of all the sermonizers
who for the last century had been preaching in the town. And it was
time that he came, for in those days the folk of Paris were greatly
addicted to games of chance; yea, even priests unblushingly indulged
in them, and seven years before, a canon of Saint-Merry, a great lover
of dice was known to have gamed in his own house.[1403] Despite war
and famine, the women of Paris loaded themselves with ornaments. They
troubled more about their beauty than about the salvation of their
souls.

[Footnote 1400: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 234.]

[Footnote 1401: _Ibid._, p. 235.]

[Footnote 1402: Th. Basin, _Histoire des regnes de Charles VII et de
Louis XI_, vol. iv, pp. 103, 104.]

[Footnote 1403: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 236.]

Friar Richard thundered most loudly against the draught boards of the
men and the ornaments of the women. One day notably, when he was
preaching at Boulogne-la-Petite, he cried down dice and
_hennins_,[1404] and spoke with such power that the hearts of those
who listened were changed. On returning to their homes, the citizens
threw into the streets gaming-tables, draught-boards, cards, billiard
cues and balls, dice and dice-boxes, and made great fires before their
doors. More than one hundred of these fires continued burning in the
streets for three or four hours. Women followed the good example set
by the men that day, and the next they burnt in public their
head-dresses, pads, ornaments, and the pieces of leather or whalebone
on which they mounted the fronts of their hoods. Young misses threw
off their horns[1405] and their tails,[1406] ashamed to clothe
themselves in the devil's garb.[1407]

[Footnote 1404: A very high head-dress, fashionable in the fifteenth
century (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1405: _Corn