The other sermons that he preached during the festival had much the same value.  You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen, yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles.  So when Easter Tuesday came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such folks as he are no niggards, he said—­

“I am bound to thank you, ladies, for the liberality you have shown to our poor monastery, and yet I cannot forbear telling you that you have hitherto not duly considered the nature of our wants.  You have for the most part given us chitterlings, but of these we ourselves have no lack.  God be praised, our monastery is indeed full of them.  What then can we do with so many?  I will tell you.  My advice, ladies, is that you should mix your hams with our chitterlings; in this way you would bestow fine alms.”

Then, continuing his sermon, he brought into it certain scandalous matter, and, whilst discoursing upon it somewhat bluntly and quoting sundry examples, he said in apparent amazement—­

“Truly, ladies and gentlemen of Saint-Martin, I am greatly astonished that you should be scandalised so unreasonably at what is less than nothing, and should tell tales of me wherever you go, saying:  ’It is a big business; who could have thought that the father would have got his landlady’s daughter with child?’ A monk get a girl with child!” he continued; “forsooth, what a wonder!  But hark you, fair ladies, would you not rather have had cause for wonderment, had the girl acted thus by the monk?”

“Such, ladies, was the wholesome food on which this worshipful shepherd fed the Lord’s flock.  And so brazen was he, that after committing the sin, he spake openly of it in the pulpit, where nought should be said that tends to aught but the edification of one’s neighbour, and above all to the glory of God.”

“Truly,” said Saffredent, “he was a master monk—­I should have liked him nearly as well as Brother Anjibaut, who gets credit for all the jests that are spoken in merry company.”

“For my part, I can see nothing laughable in such mockery,” said Oisille, “especially in such a place.”

“You forget, madam,” said Nomerfide, “that at that time, though it was not so very long ago, the good villagers, and indeed most of the dwellers in the large towns, who think themselves cleverer than other people, had greater regard for such preachers as he than for those who purely and simply preached the holy Gospel to them.”

“However that may be,” said Hircan, “he was not wrong in asking for hams in exchange for chitterlings, for in hams there is far more eating.  And even if some devout creature had understood him amphibologically, as I believe he wished to be understood, neither he nor his brethren would have fared badly any more than the wench that had her bag full.”