ateth and drinketh at her pleasure and passeth
the time with her amorous lovers according to her desire. What is the
matter (quoth her husband) though Our Master hath made holiday at the
fields, yet thinke not but I have made provision for our supper; doest
thou not see this tub that keepeth a place here in our house in vaine,
and doth us no service? Behold I have sold it to a good fellow (that is
here present) for five pence, wherefore I pray thee lend me thy hand,
that I may deliver him the tub. His wife (having invented a present
shift) laughed on her husband, saying: What marchant I pray you have you
brought home hither, to fetch away my tub for five pence, for which I
poore woman that sit all day alone in my house have beene proffered so
often seaven: her husband being well apayed of her words demanded what
he was that had bought the tub: Looke (quoth she) he is gone under, to
see where it be sound or no: then her lover which was under the tub,
began to stirre and rustle himselfe, and because his words might agree
to the words of the woman, he sayd: Dame will you have me tell the
truth, this tub is rotten and crackt as me seemeth on every side. And
then turning to her husband sayd: I pray you honest man light a Candle,
that I may make cleane the tub within, to see if it be for my purpose
or no, for I doe not mind to cast away my money wilfully: he by and
by (being made a very Oxe) lighted a candle, saying, I pray you good
brother put not your selfe to so much paine, let me make the tub cleane
and ready for you. Whereupon he put off his coate, and crept under
the tub to rub away the filth from the sides. In the meane season
this minion lover cast his wife on the bottome of the tub and had his
pleasure with her over his head, and as he was in the middest of his
pastime, hee turned his head on this side and that side, finding fault
with this and with that, till as they had both ended their businesse,
when as he delivered seaven pence for the tub, and caused the good man
himselfe to carry it on his backe againe to his Inne.

THE THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER

How the Priests of the goddesse Siria were taken and put in prison, and
how Apuleius was sold to a Baker.

After that we had tarried there a few dayes at the cost and charges
of the whole Village, and had gotten much mony by our divination and
prognostication of things to come: The priests of the goddesse Siria
invented a new meanes to picke mens purses, for they