The shafts of their pointed satire are directed with an admirable impartiality against men of every degree, so that none of us will be found to have wholly escaped. To pass over those, and they are exceedingly numerous, which are aimed at members of the monastic orders,[101] I must fain hope that this Bohemian one, pointing at the clergy, is not true; for it certainly argues no very forgiving temper on our parts in cases where we have been, or fancy ourselves to have been, wronged. It is as follows: _If you have offended a clerk, kill him; else you never will have peace with him_.[102] And another proverb, worthy to take its place among the best even of the Spanish, charges the clergy with being the authors of the chiefest spiritual mischiefs which have risen up in the Church: _By the vicar’s skirts the devil climbs up into the belfry_.[103] Nor do physicians appear in the middle ages to have been in very high reputation for piety; for a Latin medieval proverb boldly proclaims: _Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists_.[104] And as for lawyers, this of the same period, _Legista, nequista_,[105] expresses itself not with such brevity only, but with such downright plainness of speech, that I shall excuse myself from attempting to render it into English. Nor do other sorts and conditions of men escape. “The miller tolling with his golden thumb,” has been often the object of malicious insinuations; and of him the Germans have a proverb: _What is bolder than a miller’s neckcloth, which takes a thief by the throat every morning?_[106] Evenhanded justice might perhaps require that I should find caps for other heads; and it is not that such are wanting, nor yet out of fear lest any should be offended, but only because I must needs hasten onward, that I leave this part of my subject without further development. [Sidenote: Proverbs about pride.]