in bread and cheese
to the poor, the Church taking her tenth."

"Permit me, my lord; if your lordship continues to press your lordship's
staff on the other scale, you will disturb the balance."

His lordship grinned and removed his staff, and leaned on it. The cure
politely but firmly objected to that too.

"Mille diables! what am I to do with it, then?" cried the other.

"Deign to hold it out so, my lord, wide of both scales."

When my lord did this, and so fell into the trap he had laid for
Holy Church, the good cure whispered to Gerard. "Cretensis incidit in
Cretensem!" which I take to mean, "Diamond cut diamond." He then said
with an obsequious air, "If that your lordship grudges Heaven full
weight, you might set the hawk on your lacquey, and so save a pound."

"Gramercy for thy rede, cure," cried the great man, reproachfully.
"Shall I for one sorry pound grudge my poor fowl the benefit of Holy
Church? I'd as lieve the devil should have me and all my house as her,
any day i' the year."

"Sweet is affection," whispered the cure.

"Between a bird and a brute," whispered Gerard.

"Tush!" and the cure looked terrified.

The seigneur's weight was booked, and Heaven I trust and believe did not
weigh his gratitude in the balance of the sanctuary. For my unlearned
reader is not to suppose there was anything the least eccentric in the
man, or his gratitude to the Giver of health and all good gifts. Men
look forward to death, and back upon past sickness with different eyes.
Item, when men drive a bargain, they strive to get the sunny side of
it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or Heaven they are
bargaining. In this respect we are the same now, at bottom, as we were
four hundred years ago: only in those days we did it a grain or two more
naively, and that naivete shone out more palpably, because, in that rude
age, body prevailing over mind, all sentiments took material forms.
Man repented with scourges, prayed by bead, bribed the saints with wax
tapers, put fish into the body to sanctify the soul, sojourned in cold
water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God for returning health
in 1 cwt. 2 stone 7 lb 3 oz. 1 dwt. of bread and cheese.

Whilst I have been preaching, who preach so rarely and so ill, the good
cure has been soliciting the lord of the manor to step into the church,
and give order what shall be done with his great-great-grandfather.

"Ods bodikins! what, have you dug him up?"