Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/230

 cheer; and thus I leave them living in joy and bliss, and of sick Aurelius will I tell.

In languor and frenzied torment lay wretched Aurelius two years and more, ere he might set foot on the earth. Comfort in this time had he none, save of his brother, that was a clerk; he knew of all this woe and trouble; for in sooth to none other creature durst he say a word of this matter. Under his breast he bare it more secret than ever did Pamphilus for Galatea. His breast was whole, to look on without, but aye in his heart was the keen arrow; and well ye know that in surgery the cure of a wound healed only on the surface is perilous, unless men may touch the arrow, or come thereat. His brother wept and wailed privily, till at last he remembered him, that while he was at Orleans, in France—as young clerks, that be eager to read curious arts, seek in every nook and corner to learn particular sciences—he remembered him that on a day at Orleans, he saw a book of natural magic, which his fellow, who was at that time a candidate in law, although he was there to learn another art, had privily left upon his desk; which book spake much of operations, touching the eight and twenty houses that belong to the moon, and such foolishness, as is not worth a fly in our days; for the faith of the holy church, in our belief, suffereth no illusion to distress us. And when he remembered him of this book, his heart gan dance anon for joy, and he said privily to himself: "My brother shall be cured in haste; for I am sure that there be arts, by which men make such diverse appearances as these subtle jugglers contrive in play. For oft I have heard tell that jugglers at feasts have caused water to come into a great hall and a barge to row up and down therein. Sometimes there hath seemed to come a grim lion, and sometimes