masters cheated their industrious servants of their due pay and pinched them both in food and drink: and contrariwise I saw many faithless servitors which by theft or neglect brought their kind masters to ruin. Tradesfolk and craftsmen did vie with each other in Jewish roguery: exacted usury: sucked the sweat of the poor peasant's brow by all manner of chicanery and over-reaching. On the other hand, there were peasants so godless that if they were not thoroughly well and cruelly fleeced, they would sneer at other folks or even their lords themselves for their simplicity. Once did I see a soldier give another a sore buffet; and I conceived he that was smitten would turn the other cheek (for as yet I had been in no quarrel), but there was I wrong, for the insulted one drew on him, and dealt the offender a crack of the crown. So I cried at the top of my voice, "Ah! friend, what dost thou?" "A coward must he be," says he, "that would not avenge himself: devil take me but I will, or I care not to live. What! he must be a knave that would let himself be so fobbed off." And between these two antagonists the quarrel waxed greater, for their backers on both sides, together with the bystanders, and any man moreover that came by chance to the spot, were presently by the ears: and there I heard men swear by God and their own souls, so lightly, that I could not believe they held those souls for their dearest treasure. But all this was but child's play: for they stayed not at such children's curses but presently 'twas so: "Thunder, lightning, hail: strike me, tear me, devil take me," and the like, and not one thunder or lightning but a hundred thousand, "and snatch me away into the air." Yea, and the blessed sacraments for them must have been not seven but a hundred thousand, and there with so many "bloodies," "dammes," and "cursemes" that my poor hair stood on end thereat. Then thought I of Christ's command wherein He saith, "Swear not, let your speech be yea yea; and nay nay; for whatsoever is more is evil." Now all this that I saw and heard I pondered in my heart: and at the last I firmly concluded, these bullies were no Christians at all, and therefore I sought for other company. And worst of all it did terrify me when I heard some such swaggerers boast of their wickedness, sin, shame, and vice. For again and again I heard them so do, yea, day by day; and thus they would say: "'S blood, man, but we were foxed yesterday: three times in the day was I blind drunk and three times did vomit all." "My stars," says another, "how did we torment the rascal peasants!" And "Hundred thousand devils!" says a third, "what sport did we have with the women and maids!" And so on. "I cut him down as if lightning had struck him." "I shot him--shot him so that he shewed the whites of his eyes!" Or again: "I rode him down so cleverly, the devil only could fetch him off," "I put such a stone in his way that he must needs break his neck thereover."