en I was deep in debt, they always failed. Get
you hence! I will not go thither. Before God, the very bare apprehension
thereof is like to kill me. To be in a place where there are greedy,
famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst
trading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me! Get you hence! I
dare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,
Theatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment. The
wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will
and testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to
his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be so
snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?
Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his
chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of
the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy
admonitions? Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly
lumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,
and a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,
who have nothing but their life in this world? Let him go thither who
will, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail
to snatch me up. Cancro. Ho, the pox! Get you hence, Friar John! Art
thou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with
thee at this same very instant? If thou be, at my request do these three
things. First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked
with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to
thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of
Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks. This
moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with
Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a
new frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would
bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead
goats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue. The condition
being agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,
and layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of
the said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,