for the festival.  “Had he but said them the service,” interjects the fableur, “should I make you a longer story?” So much did they grumble on all sides, that the priest began on them and fell to saying very rapidly, first in a loud and then in a low tone of voice, “Dixit Dominus Domino meo” (the Lord said unto my Lord); “but,” says the fableur, “I cannot find here any sequel.”  The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;—­and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him.  Then he fell to crying, “Barabbas!”—­no crier could have cried a ban so loud as he cried to them; and everyone began to confess his sins aloud (i.e., struck up “mea culpa”) and cried, “Mercy!” The priest, who read on the sequence of his Psalter, once more began to cry out, saying, “Crucify him!” So that both men and women prayed God that he would defend them from torment.  But it sorely vexed the clerk, who said to the priest, “Make an end”; but he answered, “Make no end, friend, till ’unto the marvellous works’”—­referring to a passage in the Psalter.  The clerk then said that a long Passion service boots nothing, and that it is never a gain to keep the people too long.  And as soon as the offerings of the people were collected he finished the Passion.—­“By this tale,” adds the raconteur, “I would show you how—­by the faith of Saint Paul!—­it as well befits a fool to talk folly and sottishness as it becomes a wise man to speak wisely.  And he is a fool who believes me not."[155]—­A commentary, this, which recalls the old English saying, that “it is as great marvel to see a woman weep as to see a goose go barefoot.”

  [154] Festueum, the split straw so used in the Middle Ages.

  [155] See Meon’s edition of Barbazan’s Fabliaux et Contes,
        ed. 1808, tome ii, p. 442, and a prose extrait in Le
        Grand d’Aussy’s collection, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 101,
        “Du Pretre qui dit la Passion.”

* * * * *

They were bold fellows, those Trouveres.  Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled “Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait,” the substance of which is as follows:  A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes at a moment when neither angel nor demon was on the watch, so that, unclaimed and left to his own discretion, the peasant follows St. Peter, who happened to be on his way to Paradise, and enters the gate with him unperceived.  When the saint finds that the soul of such a low person has found its way into Paradise he is angry, and rudely orders the peasant out.  But the latter accuses St. Peter of denying his Saviour, and, conscience-stricken,