y as to be unfit either to boil
or roast, so that the bystanders all become weary, and laugh at
themselves for having so long given heed to such insane tricks. And
assuredly they must be idle folk or superlative fools to allow
themselves to be caught there a second time; the incapacity of the
players in the first comedy they perform, is so well known and cried
down, that others of respectability are mistrusted on their account.

"There are now-a-days many genuine dramatic performances in vogue at
almost all the market-places and fairs, namely the plays of Ceretani,
of orvietan vendors, and other similar fellows. They are called
Ceretani in Italy because it is presumed they have their origin and
first commencement in a small spot called Cereto, near Spoleto in
Umbria, and afterwards gradually attained such credit and
consideration, that when they were to be heard there was as great a
concourse of people assembled as were ever collected by the cleverest
doctor of the liberal arts, nay even by the best preacher who ever
entered a pulpit. For the common people run together in crowds, gaping
with open mouth, listen to them the whole day, forget all their cares,
and God knows how difficult it is,--even the peasants find it so,--to
keep one's purse in such a throng.

"When one sees these cheats take a whole lump of arsenic, sublimate,
or other poison, indiscriminately, that they may make proof by it of
the excellence of their orvietan, it should be known that, in the
summer-time before they came to the place, they have filled themselves
with lettuce dressed with so much vinegar and oil that they might swim
therein, and in winter they stuff themselves upon fat ox-brawn well
boiled. And this they do that they may by means of the fat of the brawn
and oiliness of the salad, with the coldness of their nature, obstruct
the internal passage of the body, and thus weaken the sharpness or heat
of the poison. They have besides this also a secure way of managing,
namely, before they enter the place they go to the nearest apothecary,
who generally in the towns is in or near the market; there they ask for
a box of arsenic, from which they select some small bits, and wrap them
in paper, begging the apothecary to deliver the same to them when they
send for it. Now when they have sufficiently extolled their wares, so
that nothing more remains but to make proof of them, they send out one
of the bystanders, in order that there may appear to be