She hushed her ponderling against her bosom, and stood aloof watching, whilst another woman brought her child to scale.
But presently a loud, dictatorial voice was heard, "Way there, make way for the seigneur!"The small folk parted on both sides like waves ploughed by a lordly galley, and in marched in gorgeous attire, his cap adorned by a feather with a topaz at its root, his jerkin richly furred, satin doublet, red hose, shoes like skates, diamond-hilted sword in velvet scabbard, and hawk on his wrist, "the lord of the manor.' He flung himself into the scales as if he was lord of the zodiac as well as the manor: whereat the hawk balanced and flapped; but stuck: then winked.
While the sexton heaved in the great weights, the cure told Gerard, "My lord had been sick unto death, and vowed his weight in bread and cheese to the poor, the Church taking her tenth.""Permit me, my lord; if your lordship continues to press your lordship's staff on the other scale, you will disturb the balance."His lordship grinned and removed his staff, and leaned on it.The cure politely but firmly objected to that too.
"Mille diables! what am I to do with it, then?" cried the other.
"Deign to hold it out so, my lord, wide of both scales."When my lord did this, and so fell into the trap he had laid for Holy Church, the good cure whispered to Gerard."Cretensis incidit in Cretensem!" which I take to mean, "Diamond cut diamond." He then said with an obsequious air, "If that your lordship grudges Heaven full weight, you might set the hawk on your lacquey, and so save a pound.""Gramercy for thy rede, cure," cried the great man, reproachfully.
"Shall I for one sorry pound grudge my poor fowl the benefit of Holy Church? I'd as lieve the devil should have me and all my house as her, any day i' the year.""Sweet is affection," whispered the cure.
"Between a bird and a brute," whispered Gerard.
"Tush!" and the cure looked terrified.
The seigneur's weight was booked, and Heaven I trust and believe did not weigh his gratitude in the balance of the sanctuary.For my unlearned reader is not to suppose there was anything the least eccentric in the man, or his gratitude to the Giver of health and all good gifts.Men look forward to death, and back upon past sickness with different eyes.Item, when men drive a bargain, they strive to get the sunny side of it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or Heaven they are bargaining.In this respect we are the same now, at bottom, as we were four hundred years ago: only in those days we did it a grain or two more naively, and that naivete shone out more palpably, because, in that rude age, body prevailing over mind, all sentiments took material forms.Man repented with scourges, prayed by bead, bribed the saints with wax tapers, put fish into the body to sanctify the soul, sojourned in cold water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God for returning health in 1 cwt.2 stone 7 lb 3 oz.1dwt.of bread and cheese.
Whilst I have been preaching, who preach so rarely and so ill, the good cure has been soliciting the lord of the manor to step into the church, and give order what shall be done with his great-great-grandfather.
"Ods bodikins! what, have you dug him up?""Nay, my lord, he never was buried."
"What, the old dict was true after all?"
"So true that the workmen this very day found a skeleton erect in the pillar they are repairing.I had sent to my lord at once, but I knew he would be here.""It is he! 'Tis he!" said his descendant, quickening his pace.
"Let us go see the old boy.This youth is a stranger, I think."Gerard bowed.
"Know then that my great-great-grandfather held his head high.and being on the point of death, revolted against lying under the aisle with his forbears for mean folk to pass over.So, as the tradition goes, he swore his son (my great-grandfather), to bury him erect in one of the pillars of the church" (here they entered the porch)."'For,' quoth he, 'NO BASE MAN SHALL PASS OVER MYSTOMACH.' Peste!" and even while speaking, his lordship parried adroitly with his stick a skull that came hopping at him, bowled by a boy in the middle of the aisle, who took to his heels yelling with fear the moment he saw what he had done.His lordship hurled the skull furiously after him as he ran, at which the cure gave a shout of dismay and put forth his arm to hinder him, but was too late.
The cure groaned aloud.And as if this had evoked spirits of mischief, up started a whole pack of children from some ambuscade, and unseen, but heard loud enough, clattered out of the church like a covey rising in a thick wood.