and still more to teach.  The sergeant of the law is another prominent figure, wary and wise, discreet and dignified, bustling and busy, yet not so busy as he seemed to be, wearing a coat of divers colors, and riding very badly.  A franklin, or country gentleman, mixes with the company, with a white beard and red complexion; one of Epicurus’s own sons, who held that ale and wheaten bread and fish and dainty flesh, partridge fat, were pure felicity; evidently a man given to hospitality,—­

     “His table dormant in his hall alway
      Stood ready covered all the longe day.”

He was a sheriff, also, to enforce the law, and to be present at all the county sessions.  The doctor, of course, could not be left out of the company,—­a man who knew the cause of every malady, versed in magic as well as physic, and grounded also in astronomy; who held that gold is the best of cordials, and knew how to keep what he gained; not luxurious in his diet, but careful what he ate and drank.  The village miller is not forgotten in this motley crowd,—­rough, brutal, drunken, big and brawn, with a red beard and a wart on his nose, and a mouth as wide as a furnace, a reveller and a jangler, accustomed to take toll thrice, and given to all the sins that then abounded.  He is the most repulsive figure in the crowd, both vulgar and wicked.  In contrast with him is the reve, or steward, of a lordly house,—­a slender, choleric man, feared by servants and gamekeepers, yet in favor with his lord, since he always had money to lend, although it belonged to his master; an adroit agent and manager, who so complicated his accounts that no auditor could unravel them or any person bring him in arrears.  He rode a fine dappled-gray stallion, wore a long blue overcoat, and carried a rusty sword,—­evidently a proud and prosperous man.  With a monk and friar, the picture would be incomplete without a pardoner, or seller of indulgences, with yellow hair and smooth face, loaded with a pillow-case of relics and pieces of the true cross, of which there were probably cartloads in every country in Europe, and of which the popes had an inexhaustible supply.  This sleek and gentle pedler of indulgences rode side by side with a repulsive officer of the Church, with a fiery red face, of whom children were afraid, fond of garlic and onions and strong wine, and speaking only Latin law-terms when he was drunk, but withal a good fellow, abating his lewdness and drunkenness.  In contrast with the pardoner and “sompnour” we see the poor parson, full of goodness, charity, and love,—­a true shepherd and no mercenary, who waited upon no pomp and sought no worldly gains, happy only in the virtues which he both taught and lived.  Some think that Chaucer had in view the learned Wyclif when he described the most interesting character of the whole group.  With him was a ploughman, his brother, as good and pious as he, living in peace with all the world, paying tithes cheerfully, laborious and conscientious, the forerunner of the Puritan yeoman.