It happened one day that two Grey Friars, on their way from Nyort,
arrived very late at this place, Grip, and lodged in the house of a
butcher. Now, as there was nothing between their host's room and their
own but a badly joined partition of wood, they had a mind to listen to
what the husband might say to his wife when he was in bed with her, and
accordingly they set their ears close to the head of their host's bed.
He, having no thought of his lodgers, spoke privately with his wife
concerning their household, and said to her--

"I must rise betimes in the morning, sweetheart, and see after our Grey
Friars. One of them is very fat, and must be killed; we will salt him
forthwith and make a good profit off him."

And although by "Grey Friars" he meant his pigs, the two poor brethren,
on hearing this plot, felt sure that they themselves were spoken of, (3)
and so waited with great fear and trembling for the dawn.

3 The butcher doubtless called his pigs "Grey Friars" in
allusion to the latter's gluttony and uncleanly habits. Pigs
are even nowadays termed _moines_ (monks) by the peasantry
in some parts of France. Moreover, the French often render
our expression "fat as a pig" by "fat as a monk."--Ed.

One of them was very fat and the other rather lean. The fat one wished
to confess himself to his companion, saying that a butcher who had lost
the love and fear of God would think no more of slaughtering him than if
he were an ox or any other beast; and adding that as they were shut up
in their room and could not leave it without passing through that
of their host, they must needs look upon themselves as dead men, and