kindly entreated by the young lads, but I could scarcely sleep for
marvelling at these miracles done by one so unworthy; and great, indeed,
I deemed, must be the virtue of that relic which wrought such signs in
the hands of an evil man. But I have since held that he feigned all by
art magic and very sorcery, for, as we wended next morning on our road,
he plainly told me, truly or falsely, that he had picked up the blackened
finger-bone out of the loathly ashes of the dead in the burned castle
near Ruffec.

Wherefore I consider that when Brother Thomas sold the grace of his
relic, by the touching of rings, he dealt in a devilish black simony,
vending to simple Christians no grace but that of his master, Sathanas.
Thus he was not only evil (if I guess aright, which I submit to the
judgment of my ecclesiastical superiors, and of the Church), but he had
even found out a new kind of wickedness, such as I never read of in any
books of theology wherein is much to be learned. I have spoken with
some, however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but
beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand.

This other hellish art he had, by direct inspiration, as I hold, of his
master Behemoth, that he could throw his voice whither he would, so that,
in all seeming, it came from above, or from below, or from a corner of a
room, fashioning it to resemble the voice of whom he would, yet none
might see his lips move. With this craft he would affray the peasants
about the fire in the little inns where we sometimes rested, when he
would be telling tales of bogles and eldritch fantasies, and of fiends
that rout and rap, and make the tables and firkins dance. Such art of
speech, I am advised, is spoken of by St. Jerome, in his comment on the
holy prophet the saint Isaiah, and they that use it he calls
"ventriloqui," in the Latin, or "belly-speakers," and he takes an