neighbour, which was carried to the cook, and dressed. At dinner,
the husband purposely gave the shoulder-bone of the ram, properly
cleaned, to his wife, who was also well skilled in this art, for her
examination; when, having for a short time examined the secret
marks, she smiled, and threw the oracle down on the table. Her
husband, dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling,
and the explanation of the matter. Overcome by his entreaties, she
answered: "The man to whose fold this ram belongs, has an
adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest
with his own grandson." The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected
countenance, replied: "You deliver, indeed, an oracle supported by
too much truth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as the
ignominy you have published redounds to my own injury." The woman,
thus detected, and unable to dissemble her confusion, betrayed the
inward feelings of her mind by external signs; shame and sorrow
urging her by turns, and manifesting themselves, now by blushes, now
by paleness, and lastly (according to the custom of women), by
tears. The shoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain
person, instead of a ram's - both being alike, when cleaned; who,
observing for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed, "Unhappy
cattle, that never was multiplied! unhappy, likewise, the owner of
the cattle, who never had more than three or four in one flock!"
Many persons, a year and a half before the event, foresaw, by the
means of shoulder-bones, the destruction of their country, after the
decease of king Henry I., and, selling all their possessions, left
their homes, and escaped the impending ruin.

It happened also in Flanders, from whence this people came, that a
certain man sent a similar bone to a neighbour for his inspection;
and the person who carried it, on passing over a ditch, broke wind,