But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days were human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline, for a certain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold lace. Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold lace was as scandalous as a —, and as ill received among the women. What should our three knights do in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there but _altum silentium_. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point, but this of gold lace seemed too considerable an alteration without better warrant. It did _aliquo modo essentiæ adhærere_, and therefore required a positive precept. But about this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read “Aristotelis Dialectica,” and especially that wonderful piece _de Interpretatione_, which has the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in everything but itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who proceed prophets without understanding a syllable of the text. “Brothers,” said he, “you are to be informed that of wills, _duo sunt genera_, nuncupatory and scriptory, {77a} that in the scriptory will here before us there is no precept or mention about gold lace, _conceditur_, but _si idem affirmetur de nuncupatorio negatur_. For, brothers, if you remember, we heard a fellow say when we were boys that he heard my father’s man say that he heard my father say that he would advise his sons to get gold lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buy it.” “That is very true,” cries the other. “I remember it perfectly well,” said the third. And so, without more ado, they got the largest gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine as lords.