renonce pas (ce qui eut été trop rigoureux) du moins je n'en mange jamais sans que le plaisir qu'elles me causent ne soit mêlé d'un peu de defiance." The mushroom was also equally well known as the truffle to the ancient Romans for its aphrodisiacal qualities. Thus, Martial says: "Quum sit anus conjux et sint tibi mortua membra, Nil aliud _bulbis_ quam sater esse potes."[124] "If envious age relax the nuptial knot, Thy food be mushrooms, and thy feast shalot." This bulb was believed by the ancients to be so decided a stimulant, that it was always served up, together with pepper and pine-nuts, at the wedding dinner. An immoderate use of chocolate was, in the 17th century, considered so powerful an aphrodisiac that Jean Franco Raucher strenuously enforced the necessity of forbidding the monks to drink it, adding that if such an interdiction had been laid upon it at an earlier period, the scandal with which that sacred order had been assailed would have been prevented. It is a singular fact that, fearful of losing their character, or, what, perhaps, was dearer to them, their chocolate, the worthy cenobites were so diligent in suppressing Raucher's work that four copies only of it are said to be in existence. The history of the middle ages abounds with complaints of the lubricity, gluttony, and drunkenness of the monks, vices which are described as being their ruin, in the fallowing pithy distich: "Sunt tria nigrorum quæ vestant res monachorum, Renes et venter et pocula sumpta frequenter."[125] "Three things to ruin monks combine-- Venery, gluttony, and wine." A monk who was a great enemy to adultery, was one day preaching against it, and grew so warm in his argument, and took so much pains to convince his congregation of his own abhorrence of it, that at last he broke out in the following solemn declaration: "Yea, my brethren, I had rather, for the good of my soul, have to do with ten maids every month, than, in ten years, to touch one married woman!" The celebrity they acquired in the field of Venus may readily be imagined from a quatrain that was affixed in a conspicuous part of the Church of St. Hyacinthe, and which runs thus: "Femmes qui désirez de devenir enceinte Addressez cy vos vœux au grand Saint Hyacinthe, Et tout ce que pour vous le Saint ne pourra faire _Les moines de céans pourront y satisfaire_.[126] "You ladies who for pregnancy do wish To great St. Hyacinthe your prayers apply, And what his Saintship cannot accomplish _The monks within will surely satisfy_." It would have been well had these holy men been contented with these, comparatively, venial indulgences. The following macaronic epigram, however, shows that they were but too much addicted to the _Amour Socratique_: "Let a friar of some order tecum pernoctare Either thy wife or thy daughter hic vult violare, Or thy son he will prefer, sicut fortem fortis, God give such a friar pain in Inferni portis."[127]