said, that this man, for that time, was my master. He was learned in all
the arts by which poor and wandering folk can keep their bellies full
wandering by the way. With women, ugly and terrible of aspect as he was,
he had a great power: a pious saying for the old; a way with the young
which has ever been a mystery to me, unless, as some of the learned
think, all women are naturally lovers of wickedness, if strength and
courage go with it. What by wheedling, what by bullying, what by tales
of pilgrimages to holy shrines (he was coming from Jerusalem by way of
Rome, so he told all we met), he ever won a welcome.

Other more devilish cantrips he played, one of them at the peasant's
house where we rested on the first night of our common travel. The
Lenten supper which they gave us, with no little kindness, was ended, and
we were sitting in the firelight, Brother Thomas discoursing largely of
his pilgrimages, and of his favour among the high clergy. Thus, at I
know not what convent of the Clarisses, {5} in Italy, the holy Sisters
had pressed on him a relic of Monsieur St. Aignan, the patron of the good
town of Orleans. To see this relic, the farmer, his wife, and his sons
and daughters crowded eagerly; it was but a little blackened finger bone,
yet they were fain to touch it, as is the custom. But this he would not
yet allow.

"Perchance some of you," he said, "are already corrupt, not knowing it,
with the poisonous breath of that damnable Hussite heresy, which is
blowing from the east like wind of the pestilence, and ye may have doubts
concerning the verity of this most holy and miraculous relic?"

They all crossed themselves, protesting that no such wicked whisper of
Sathanas had ever come into their minds, nor had they so much as heard of
Huss and his blasphemies.