Bonaventure des Périers's Novel Pastimes and Merry Tales by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Tale 45

OF LORD DE RASCHAULT, WHO WENT TO DRAW WINE, AND HOW THE SPIGOT SLIPPED INTO HIS PINT

In the city of Poitiers, there was a good-hearted gentleman from a very wealthy family; he was a man fit for great undertakings, but he had a tremendous physical defect, his tongue; he couldn’t say three words without stuttering, and, besides, it took him an hour to utter them, and in the end he couldn’t make himself understood. And yet he tossed off very smartly the first word he said, like a damn it and a hang it, when he was in a temper, which is a sign that such a defect is but the result of a choleric humor, extremely plentiful in man, which prevents him from tempering his speech. I ought to pay a fine to teach me not to philosophize. At any rate, when his father saw that he was afflicted this way, he placed him from his earliest childhood in the care of the curate of Saint Didier, who made him psalmodize in church, chant the Benedicamus1 and lessons at matins and vigils in order to improve his tongue; however, he didn’t profit from anything except that, when he sang, he pronounced fairly distinctly his everyday speech, but in speaking he always retained this imperfection. He was married off to a young lady from a good family; she was virtuous and wise and knew how to handle him easily. One day, on one of the four great feast days,2 while everyone was doing his devotions, this good gentleman, having finished his, came home with one of his servants to eat some venison pâté the young lady had made. But when it came to having breakfast, it turned out that she had the key, and this angered him greatly because there was no cause for interrupting the young lady’s devotions and having her come from church for a pâté. But since he was hungry, he sent his man here and there to get something for breakfast. However, when he had one thing, he was short of another; butter for frying, an egg to make the sauce; onions, vinegar, mustard; they were both very much at a loss in the absence of women, who understand those things, particularly in homes run by wives, but they, not the homes, but the wives, weren’t going to come from church until high mass was over. The gentleman was anxious to ply a trade he didn’t understand, and when he saw that his servant wasn’t doing his appetite any good he chased him from the house and told him to go to the devil. When he thus saw himself deprived of help, he was very perplexed; nevertheless, he didn’t want to lose his breakfast, which was ready, by hook or by crook, except that the word of the Gospel was applicable: Vinum non habent.3 What did he do? He didn’t have the key to the cellar, but he went at that lock with a vengeance

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