ke by
rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of
Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were
all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words following:
Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now
glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire.
But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly
impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord
and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means
to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we.
Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had
overmuch drunken and the best word he could have of him was that he
would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if
it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat
Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of that beast the
unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the other all
this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice
him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that
he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat
laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir Leopold which
never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange humour which he would
not bewray and also for that he rued for her that bare whoso she might
be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous of mother Church
that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons, of Lilith,
patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of brightness
or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the
influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she lie
with a woman which her man has but lain with, _effectu secuto_, or
peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses
Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human soul
was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God's
greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to bear
beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the fisherman's
seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church for all ages
founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would he in like
case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness