so to the other churches, where there was a banquet (bank) of pardons. For
my part, I gained no more of them, but he at all the boxes kissed the
relics, and gave at everyone. To be brief, when we were returned, he
brought me to drink at the castle-tavern, and there showed me ten or twelve
of his little bags full of money, at which I blessed myself, and made the
sign of the cross, saying, Where have you recovered so much money in so
little time? Unto which he answered me that he had taken it out of the
basins of the pardons. For in giving them the first farthing, said he, I
put it in with such sleight of hand and so dexterously that it appeared to
be a threepence; thus with one hand I took threepence, ninepence, or
sixpence at the least, and with the other as much, and so through all the
churches where we have been. Yea but, said I, you damn yourself like a
snake, and are withal a thief and sacrilegious person. True, said he, in
your opinion, but I am not of that mind; for the pardoners do give me it,
when they say unto me in presenting the relics to kiss, Centuplum accipies,
that is, that for one penny I should take a hundred; for accipies is spoken
according to the manner of the Hebrews, who use the future tense instead of
the imperative, as you have in the law, Diliges Dominum, that is, Dilige.
Even so, when the pardon-bearer says to me, Centuplum accipies, his meaning
is, Centuplum accipe; and so doth Rabbi Kimy and Rabbi Aben Ezra expound
it, and all the Massorets, et ibi Bartholus. Moreover, Pope Sixtus gave me
fifteen hundred francs of yearly pension, which in English money is a
hundred and fifty pounds, upon his ecclesiastical revenues and treasure,
for having cured him of a cankerous botch, which did so torment him that he
thought to have been a cripple by it all his life. Thus I do pay myself at
my own hand, for otherwise I get nothing upon the said ecclesiastical
treasure. Ho, my friend! said he, if thou didst know what advantage I
made, and how well I feathered my nest, by the Pope's bull of the crusade,
thou wouldst wonder exceedingly. It was worth to me above six thousand
florins, in English coin six hundred pounds. And what a devil is become of