"What! fornicator!" answered he, with a scornful laughter, "I am no fornicator because I have given this marriage a twist: a fornicator is he that the sixth commandment[5] speaks of, where it forbids that any man get into another's garden and nick the fruit before the owner." How to prove that this was so to be understood, he forthwith explained according to his devil's catechism the seventh commandment, wherein it is said, "Thou shalt not steal." And of such words he used many, so that I sighed within myself and thought, "O God-blaspheming sinner, thou callest thyself a marriage-twister: and so then God must be a marriage-breaker, seeing that He doth separate man and wife by death." And out of mine overflowing zeal and anger I said to him, officer though he was, "Thinkest thou not, thou sinnest more with these godless words than by thine act of adultery." So he answered me, "Thou rascal, must I give thee a buffet or two?" Yea, and I believe I had received a handsome couple of such if the fellow had not stood in fear of my lord. So I held my peace, and thereafter I marked it was no rare case for single folk to cast eyes upon wedded folk and wedded folk upon such as were unwedded. Now while I was yet studying, under my good hermit's care, the way to eternal life, I much wondered why God had so straitly forbidden idolatry to his people: for I imagined, if any one had ever known the true and eternal God, he would never again honour and pray to any other, and so in my stupid mind I resolved that this commandment was unnecessary and vain. But ah! Fool as I was, I knew not what I thought I knew: for no sooner was I come into the great world, than I marked how (in spite of this commandment) wellnigh every man had his special idol: yet some had more than the old and new heathen themselves. Some had their god in their money-bags, upon which they put all their trust and confidence: many a one had his idol at court, and trusted wholly and entirely on him: which idol was but a minion and often even such a pitiable lickspittle as his worshipper himself; for his airy godhead depended only on the April weather of a prince's smile: others found their idol in popularity, and fancied, if they could but attain to that they would themselves be demi-gods. Yet others had their gods in their head, namely, those to whom the true God had granted a sound brain, so that they were able to learn certain arts and sciences: for these forgot the great Giver and looked only to the gift, in the hope that gift would procure them all prosperity. Yea, and there were many whose god was but their own belly, to which they daily offered sacrifice, as once the heathen did to Bacchus and Ceres, and when that god shewed himself unkind or when human failings shewed themselves in him, these miserable folk then made a god of their physician, and sought for their life's prolongation in the apothecary's shop, wherefrom they were more often sped on their way to death.