The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

three bushels of meal at a time: yet market day comes but once a week. As for the butchers, they will not kill for us unless we bribe them.”

      “Courage!” said Gerard kindly, “the shoe pinches every trader somewhere.”

      “Ay: but not as it pinches us. Our shoe is trode all o' one side as well as pinches us lame. A savoir, if we pay not the merchants we buy meal, meat, and wine of, they can cast us into prison and keep us there till we pay or die. But we cannot cast into prison those who buy those very victuals of us. A traveller's horse we may keep for his debt; but where, in Heaven's name? In our own stable, eating his head off at our cost. Nay, we may keep the traveller himself; but where? In gaol? Nay, in our own good house, and there must we lodge and feed him gratis. And so fling good silver after bad? Merci; no: let him go with a wanion. Our honestest customers are the thieves. Would to Heaven there were more of them. They look not too close into the shape of the canakin, nor into the host's reckoning: with them and with their purses 'tis lightly come, and lightly go. Also they spend freely, not knowing but each carouse may be their last. But the thief-takers, instead of profiting by this fair example, are for ever robbing the poor host. When noble or honest travellers descend at our door, come the Provost's men pretending to suspect them, and demanding to search them and their papers. To save which offence the host must bleed wine and meat. Then come the excise to examine all your weights and measures. You must stop their mouths with meat and wine. Town excise. Royal excise. Parliament excise. A swarm of them, and all with a wolf in their stomachs and a sponge in their gullets. Monks, friars, pilgrims, palmers, soldiers, excisemen, provost-marshals and men, and mere bad debtors, how can 'The White Hart' butt against all these? Cutting no throats in self-defence as do your 'Swans' and 'Roses' and 'Boar's Heads' and 'Red Lions' and 'Eagles,' your 'Moons,' 'Stars,' and 'Moors,' how can 'The White Hart' give a pint of wine for a pint? And everything risen so. Why, lad, not a pound of bread I sell but cost me three good copper deniers, twelve to the sou; and each pint of wine, bought by the tun, costs me four deniers; every sack of charcoal two sous, and gone in a day. A pair of partridges five sous. What think you of that? Heard one ever the like? five sous for two little beasts all bone and feather? A pair of pigeons, thirty deniers. 'Tis ruination!!! For we may not raise our pricen with the market. Oh, no, I tell thee the shoe is trode all o' one side as well as pinches the water into our eyn. We may charge nought for mustard, pepper, salt, or firewood. Think you we get them for nought? Candle it is a sou the pound. Salt five sous the stone, pepper four sous the pound, mustard twenty deniers the pint; and raw meat, dwindleth it on the spit with no cost to me but loss of weight? Why, what think you I pay my cook? But you shall never guess. A HUNDRED SOUS A YEAR AS I AM A LIVING SINNER.

      “And my waiter thirty sous, besides his perquisites. He is a hantle richer than I am. And then to be insulted as well as pillaged. Last Sunday I went to church. It is a place I trouble not often. Didn't the cure lash the hotel-keepers? I grant you he hit all the trades, except the one that is a byword for looseness, and pride, and sloth, to wit, the clergy. But, mind you, he stripeit the other lay estates with a feather, but us hotel-keepers with a neat's pizzle: godless for this, godless for that, and most godless of all for opening our doors during mass. Why, the law forces us to open at all hours to travellers from another town, stopping, halting, or passing: those be the words. They can fine us before the bailiff if we refuse them, mass or no mass; and say a townsman should creep in with the true travellers, are we to blame? They all vow they are tired wayfarers; and can I ken every face in a great town like this? So if we respect the law our poor souls are to suffer, and if we respect it not, our poor lank purses must bleed at two holes, fine and loss of custom.”

      A man speaking of himself in general, is “a babbling brook;” of his wrongs, “a shining river.”

      “Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.”

      So luckily for my readers, though not for all concerned, this injured orator was arrested in mid career. Another man burst in upon his wrongs with all the advantage of a recent wrong; a wrong red hot. It was Denys cursing and swearing and crying that he was robbed.

      “Did those hussies pass this way? who are they? where do they bide? They have ta'en my purse and fifteen golden pieces: raise the hue and cry! ah! traitresses! vipers! These inns are all guet-apens.”

      “There now,” cried the landlord to Gerard.

      Gerard implored him to be calm, and say how it had befallen.

      “First one went out on some pretence: then after a while the other went to fetch her back, and neither returning, I clapped hand to purse and found it empty: the ungrateful creatures, I was letting them win it in a gallop: but loaded dice were not quick enough; they must claw it all in a lump.”

      Gerard was for going at once to the alderman and setting the officers to find them.

      “Not I,” said Denys. “I hate the law. No: as it came so let it go.”

      Gerard would not give it up so.

      At a hint from the landlord he forced Denys along with him to the provost-marshal. That dignitary shook his head. “We have no clue to occasional thieves, that work honestly at their needles, till some gull comes and tempts them with an easy booty, and then they pluck him.

      “Come away,” cried Denys furiously. “I knew what use a bourgeois would be to me at a pinch:” and he marched off in a rage.

      “They are clear of the town ere this,” said Gerard.

      “Speak no more on't if you prize my friendship. I have five pieces with the bailiff, and ten I left with Manon, luckily; or these traitresses had feathered their nest with my last plume. What dost gape for so? Nay, I do ill to vent my choler on thee: I'll tell thee all. Art wiser than I. What saidst thou at the door? No matter. Well, then, I did offer marriage to that Manon.”

      Gerard was dumfounded.

      “What? You offered her what?”

      “Marriage. Is that such a mighty strange thing to offer a wench?”

      “'Tis a strange thing to offer to a strange girl in passing.”

      “Nay, I am not such a sot as you opine. I saw the corn in all that chaff. I knew I could not get her by fair means, so I was fain to try foul. 'Mademoiselle,' said I, 'marriage is not one of my habits, but struck by your qualities I make an exception; deign to bestow this hand on me.'”

      “And she bestowed it on thine ear.'”

      “Not so. On the contrary she—Art a disrespectful young monkey. Know that here, not being Holland or any other barbarous state, courtesy begets courtesy. Says she, a colouring like a rose, 'Soldier, you are too late. He is not a patch on you for looks; but then—he has loved me a long time.'

      “'He? who?'

      “'T'other.'

      “'What other?'

      “Why, he that was not too late.' Oh, that is the way they all speak, the loves; the she-wolves. Their little minds go in leaps. Think you they marshal their words in order of battle? Their tongues are in too great a hurry. Says she, 'I love him not; not to say love him; but he does me, and dearly; and for that reason I'd sooner die than cause him grief, I would.'”

      “Now I believe she did love him.”

      “Who doubts that? Why she said so, round about, as they always say these things, and with 'nay' for 'ay.'

      “Well one thing led to another, and at last, as she could not give me her hand, she gave me a piece of advice, and that was to leave part of my money with the young mistress. Then, when bad company had cleaned me out, I should have some to travel back with, said she. I said I would better her advice, and leave it with her. Her face got red. Says she, 'Think what you do. Chambermaids have an ill name for honesty.' 'Oh, the devil is not so black as he is painted,' said I. 'I'll risk it;' and I left fifteen gold pieces with her.”

      Gerard sighed. “I wish you may ever see them again. It is wondrous in what esteem you do hold this sex, to trust so to the first comer. For my part I know little about them; I never saw but one I could love as well as I love thee. But the ancients must