Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/141

 shalt have a thing, and so may God save my soul! there is never a creature in all this world that shall eat or drink of this mixture, even the amount of a corn of wheat, but he shall yield up his life anon. Yea, die he shall, and that in less time than thou wilt go a mile at a walk; so strong and so violent is this poison."

This cursed reveller hath taken into his hand the poison in a box; and thereupon he ran unto a man in the next street and borrowed of him three large bottles; and into two poured he his poison. The third he kept clean for his own drink; for all that night he planned to toil in carrying away of the gold from that place. And when this reveller, sorrow betide him—had filled his three great bottles with wine, he repaireth to his fellows.

What needeth to discourse more of this? For even as they had devised his death at the first, right so have they slain him; and that speedily.

And when this was done, thus spake one of them: "Now let us sit and drink and make joy, and afterward we will bury his body." And with that word it happed him perchance that he took the bottle wherein the poison was, and drank of it and gave his fellow also to drink, for which right anon they died both the two.

But certes I suppose that Avicenna wrote never in any canon or any chapter more wondrous signs of empoisoning than had these two wretches before their end.

Thus be ended these homicides and eke the false empoisoner.

O cursed sin, full of cursedness! O wickedness! O traitor's homicide! O gluttony, lust and gambling! O thou blasphemer of Christ, with churlish tongue and monstrous oaths born of evil