But it is necessary also to remember the other side of the picture. Personal idiosyncrasies were no less apt to jar in the middle ages than they are today; there are unfortunates who are born to be unpopular; there are tempers which will lose themselves; and in conventual life there is no balm of solitude for frayed nerves. These nuns were very human people; a mere accident of birth had probably sent them to a convent rather than to the care of husband and children in a manor-hall; just as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a mere accident of birth made one son the squire, another the soldier and a third the parson. No special saintliness of disposition was theirs and no miracle intervened to render them immune from tantrums when they crossed the convent threshold. Nothing is at once more striking and more natural than the prevalence of little quarrels, sometimes growing into serious disputes, among the inmates of monasteries. Browning's Spanish Cloister was no mere figment of his inventive brain; indeed it is, if anything, less startling than the medieval Langland's description of the convent, where Wrath was cook and where all was far from "buxomnesse." Certainly Langland's indictment is a violent one; the satirist must darken his colours to catch the eye; and, had Chaucer been the painter, we might have had a dispute couched in more courteous terms and more "estatlich of manere." But the satirist's account is significant, because his very office demands that he shall exaggerate only what exists; his words are a smoke which cannot rise without fire. So Langland may speak through the lips of Wrath, with two white eyes: I have an aunte to nonne . and an abbesse bothe, Hir were leuere swowe or swelte . şan suffre any peyne. I haue be cook in hir kichyne . and şe couent serued Many monthes with hem . and with monkes bothe. I was şe priouresses potagere . and other poure ladyes And made hem ioutes of iangelynge . şat dame Iohanne was a bastard, And dame Clarice a knightes doughter . ac a kokewolde was hire syre, And dame Peronelle a prestes file . Priouresse worth she neuere For she had childe in chirityme . all owre chapitere it wiste . Of wycked wordes I, Wrath . here wortes imade, Til "thow lixte" and "thow lixte" lopen oute at ones, And eyther hitte other . vnder the cheke; Hadde thei had knyves, by Cryst . her eyther had killed other[931]. From "thow lixte" to "Gr-r-r you swine" how little change!