ult it was for them to keep secrets revealed to
them in confession unmanifested to the ears of others, seeing for the space
of four-and-twenty hours they were not able to lay up in secret a box which
he had highly recommended to their discretion, charge, and custody.

Welcome, in good faith, my dear master, welcome! It did me good to hear
you talk, the Lord be praised for all! I do not remember to have seen you
before now, since the last time that you acted at Montpellier with our
ancient friends, Anthony Saporra, Guy Bourguyer, Balthasar Noyer, Tolet,
John Quentin, Francis Robinet, John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the
moral comedy of him who had espoused and married a dumb wife. I was there,
quoth Epistemon. The good honest man her husband was very earnestly urgent
to have the fillet of her tongue untied, and would needs have her speak by
any means. At his desire some pains were taken on her, and partly by the
industry of the physician, other part by the expertness of the surgeon, the
encyliglotte which she had under her tongue being cut, she spoke and spoke
again; yea, within a few hours she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and
so long, that her poor husband returned to the same physician for a recipe
to make her hold her peace. There are, quoth the physician, many proper
remedies in our art to make dumb women speak, but there are none that ever
I could learn therein to make them silent. The only cure which I have
found out is their husband's deafness. The wretch became within few weeks
thereafter, by virtue of some drugs, charms, or enchantments which the
physician had prescribed unto him, so deaf that he could not have heard the
thundering of nineteen hundred cannons at a salvo. His wife perceiving
that indeed he was as deaf as a door-nail, and that her scolding was but in
vain, sith that he heard her not, she grew stark mad.

Some time after the doctor asked for his fee of the husband, who answered
that truly he was deaf, and so was not able to understand what the tenour
of his demand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted him with a little, I
know not what, sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immediately, so
great was the stultificating virtue of that strange kind of pulverized
dose. Then did this fool of a husband and his mad wife join together, and,
falling on the doctor and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and bang
them that they were left half dead upon the place, so furious were t