To tell you all the poor ass’s confession, it would be a long work.  For everything that he did was deadly sin with him, the poor soul was so scrupulous.  But his wise wily confessor accounted them for trifles (as they were) and swore afterward to the badger that he was so weary to sit so long and hear him that, saving for the sake of manners, he had rather have sat all that time at breakfast with a good fat goose.  But when it came to the giving of the penance, the fox found that the most weighty sin in all his shrift was gluttony.  And therefore he discreetly gave him in penance that he should never for greediness of his food do any other beast any harm or hindrance.  And then he should eat his food and worry no more.

Now, as good Mother Maud told us, when the wolf came to Father Reynard (that was, she said, the fox’s name) to confession upon Good Friday, his confessor shook his great pair of beads at him, almost as big as bowling balls, and asked him wherefore he came so late.  “Forsooth, Father Reynard,” quoth he, “I must needs tell you the truth—­I come, you know, for that.  I dared not come sooner for fear lest you would, for my gluttony, have given me in penance to fast some part of this Lent.”  “Nay, nay,” quoth Father Fox, “I am not so unreasonable, for I fast none of it myself.  For I may say to thee, son, between us twain here in confession, it is no commandment of God, this fasting, but an invention of man.  The priests make folk fast, and then put them to trouble about the moonshine in the water, and do but make folk fools.  But they shall make me no such fool, I warrant thee, son, for I ate flesh all this Lent, myself.  Howbeit indeed, because I will not be occasion of slander, I ate it secretly in my chamber, out of sight of all such foolish brethren as for their weak scrupulous conscience would wax offended by it.  And so would I counsel you to do.”  “Forsooth, Father Fox,” quoth the wolf, “and so, thank God, I do, as near as I can.  For when I go to my meal, I take no other company with me but such sure brethren as are of mine own nature, whose consciences are not weak, I warrant you, but their stomachs are as strong as mine.”  “Well, then, no matter,” quoth Father Fox.  But when he heard afterward, by his confession, that he was so great a ravener that he devoured and spent sometimes so much victuals at a meal that the price of them would well keep some poor man with his wife and children almost all the week, then he prudently reproved that point in him, and preached him a sermon of his own temperance.  For he never used, he said, to pass the value of sixpence at a meal—­no, nor even that much, “For when I bring home a goose,” quoth he, “it is not out of the poulterer’s shop, where folk find them with their feathers ready plucked and see which is the fattest, and yet for sixpence buy and choose the best; but out of the housewife’s house, at first hand, which can supply them somewhat cheaper, you know, than the poulterer can.  Nor