“Sir,” replied the friar, “I am not the inventor of this family tradition, nor of the crime which is said--however justly I know not--to have given rise to it; but this I do know, that no man having claims to the character of a gentleman would use such language to a defenceless man as you have just used to me. The legend is traditionary in your family, and I have only given it as I have heard it. If I were not a clergyman I would chastise you for your insolence; but my hands are bound up, and you well know it.” “Friar,” said Greatrakes, “when you know that your hands are bound up, you should have avoided insulting any man. You should not have related a piece of family history--perhaps false from beginning to end--in the presence of a gentleman so intimately connected with that family as you knew him to be. It was no topic for a common room like this, and it was quite unjustifiable in you to have introduced it.” “I feel, sir, that you are perfectly right,” replied the good-natured friar, “and I ask Mr. Woodward's pardon for having, without the slightest intention of offence to him, done so. You will recollect that he himself expressed an anxiety to hear it.” “All I say upon the subject,” observed the Pythagorean, “is simply this, that Pythagoras himself could not have cured me of the rheumatism as my friend Valentine Greatrakes has done.” “You will require no cure, and, what is better, no necessity for cure,” replied Greatrakes, smiling, “if you will have only common sense, my dear Cooke. Clothe yourself in warm and comfortable garments, and feed your miserable carcass with good beef and mutton, and, in addition to which, like myself and the friar here, take a warm tumbler of good usquebaugh punch to promote digestion.” “I will never abandon my principles,” replied the philosopher. “Linen and vegetable diet forever.” Manifold was asleep after his gorge,--a sleep from which he never awoke,--but Doctor Doolittle, anxious to secure Cooke as a patient, became quite eloquent upon the advantages of a vegetable diet, and of the Pythagorean system in general; after which the conversation of the night closed, and the guests departed to their respective lodgings.