Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/380

376 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. their dinner, and at least two hours at supper ; and unless their bellies are well filled with good wine, flesh, and fish, they run away from their masters, and go into the army.

Gi. Every nation has its peculiar customs ; the Italians lay out but very little upon their bellies ; they love money better than plea- sure ; and this temperance they owe rather to nature than custom. Ja. Now, truly, I do not wonder you are come home so lean, but rather that you are come home alive, especially since you were so used to capons, partridges, pigeons, and pheasants. Gi. Why, in truth, I had very fairly trooped off, unless I had found me out a remedy. Ja. It is but poor living where such frequent recourse must be had to reme- dies. Gi. I brought matters about so that I had the fourth part of a boiled pullet allowed to every meal, to keep up my languishing spirits. Ja, Ay, marry, now you begin to live ! Gi. Not altogether so well as you imagine ; for old Gripe bought the least he could lay his hands on, to save expenses, such that six of them would not serve a Polander of a tolerable stomach for a breakfast ; and when he had bought them, he would give them no corn, because he would not put himself to extraordinary charges ; so a wing or a leg of the fowl that was half starved before it was put into the pot, was boiled for my dinner, and the liver always went to Orthrogonus's little son ; and as for the broth, the women were perpetually lapping it up, and every now and then they put in fresh water ; so that by that time it came to me it was as dry as a chip, and no more taste in it than the foot of a joint-stool. And as for the broth, it was nothing but a little water bewitched. Ja. And yet I hear tha,t you have all sorts of fowl there in great plenty, very good and very cheap. Gi. They are so, but money is hard to cOme by. Ja. You have done penance enough, one would think, if you had murdered the pope, or pissed against St. Peter's tomb-stone.

Gi. But hear the rest of the farce out. You know there are five days in a week that we may eat flesh on. Ja. What then 1 Gi. He only bought two pullets for the whole week. On Thursday he would pretend he forgot to go to market, lest I should either have a whole pullet on that day, or any should be left. Ja. In shoi't, I think your landlord was a greater miser than Eulio in Plautus. But what course did you take to keep yourself alive upon fish-days 1 Gi. I employed a certain friend to buy me every day three eggs with my own money two for my dinner, and one for my supper. But here also the women put their tricks upon me ; for instead of my new-laid eggs that I paid a good price for, they would give me rotten ones, that 1 thought I came well off if one of my three eggs proved eatable. I also at last got a small cask of good wine bought for my own drinking, but the women broke open my cellar-door, and in a few days di*ank it all up, and my landlord, Antronius, did not seem to be much displeased at the matter.

Ja. But was there nobody in the family that took pity on you ? Gi. Take pity on me, say you ? No; they thought me a glutton and a cormorant, who by myself devoured so much victuals. And upon that account Orthrogonus would ever and anon give me good advice, that I should consider the climate where I lived, and therefore have regard to myself; telling me of several of my countrymen who had by their over-eating in that country either procured their own deaths, or brought