ill one day be roasted like
capons in Beelzebub's kitchen. This neither fills our belly or our
purse, it's true, but it is a consolation; so I shall pass whole days
and nights listening to his overhauling the priests, the doctors of law
and the other pharisees! And our friend does well, for we must hear
these pharisees. If you are brought before their tribunal for some
trifle, they can only say, 'Quick to gaol or to the lash! thief!
villain! firebrand of hell! son of Satan!' and other paternal
remonstrances. By the nose of Ezekiel! do they think thus to ruin men?
The cursed fools don't know, then, that many a horse, restive to the
whip, will obey the voice. But our friend of Nazareth knows it well,
when he said to us the other day, 'If your brother has sinned against
you, take him back; if he repents, pardon him.' That's talking; for, by
the ear of Melchisedeck! I am not as tender and benign as the pascal
lamb. No, no: I have had time to harden my heart, my head and my
skin.--Twenty years ago, my father drove me from his house for a
youthful folly. Since then I have lived at loggerheads with the devil. I
am just as difficult to bridle as a wild ass. And yet, on the faith of
Banaias! by a single word of his gentle voice, our friend of Nazareth
could make me go to the end of the world.'

'If Jesus cannot come,' said another drinker, 'he will send one of his
disciples to inform us, and to preach to us good news in the name of his
master.'

'For want of a cake of fine wheaten flour kneaded with honey, we eat
barley bread,' said an old mendicant bent with age.

'The words of the disciples are good: that of the master is better.'

'Oh, yes!' observed another old mendicant; 'to us who have despaired
since our birth, he gives eternal hope.'

'Jesus teaches us that we are not below our masters,' said a slave of
gloomy appearance.

'Now, since we are as good as our masters, by what right do they keep us
in slavery?'

'Is it because if there are a hundred masters on one side, we are ten
thousand slaves on the other?' observed a second.

'Patience, patience! a day will come when we shall reckon our masters,
and reckon ourselves afterwards; after which will be accomplished the
words of Jesus, 'The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.'
He has said to us artizans, who, by the burden of taxes and the avarice
of sellers, are often in want of bread and garments, as also our wives
and children, 'Be not disquieted; G