others. When he encountered with any of them upon the street, he would not
never fail to put some trick or other upon them, sometimes putting the bit
of a fried turd in their graduate hoods, at other times pinning on little
foxtails or hares'-ears behind them, or some such other roguish prank. One
day that they were appointed all to meet in the Fodder Street (Sorbonne),
he made a Borbonesa tart, or filthy and slovenly compound, made of store of
garlic, of assafoetida, of castoreum, of dogs' turds very warm, which he
steeped, tempered, and liquefied in the corrupt matter of pocky boils and
pestiferous botches; and, very early in the morning therewith anointed all
the pavement, in such sort that the devil could not have endured it, which
made all these good people there to lay up their gorges, and vomit what was
upon their stomachs before all the world, as if they had flayed the fox;
and ten or twelve of them died of the plague, fourteen became lepers,
eighteen grew lousy, and about seven and twenty had the pox, but he did not
care a button for it. He commonly carried a whip under his gown, wherewith
he whipped without remission the pages whom he found carrying wine to their
masters, to make them mend their pace. In his coat he had above six and
twenty little fobs and pockets always full; one with some lead-water, and a
little knife as sharp as a glover's needle, wherewith he used to cut
purses; another with some kind of bitter stuff, which he threw into the
eyes of those he met; another with clotburrs, penned with little geese' or
capon's feathers, which he cast upon the gowns and caps of honest people,
and often made them fair horns, which they wore about all the city,
sometimes all their life. Very often, also, upon the women's French hoods
would he stick in the hind part somewhat made in the shape of a man's
member. In another, he had a great many little horns full of fleas and
lice, which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast them
with small canes or quills to write with into the necks of the daintiest
gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church, for he never
seated himself above in the choir, but always sat in the body of the church