[Footnote 134: "Les Deux Bordeors [bourders, jesters] Ribaux."] Every now and then, too, we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of the "Ephesian matron" ends-- "Por ce teng-je celui a fol Qui trop met en fame sa cure; Fame est de trop foible nature, De noient rit, de noient pleure, Fame aime et het en trop poi d'eure: Tost est ses talenz remuez, Qui fame croit, si est desves." So too, again, in "La Housse Partie," a piece which perhaps ranks next to the "Vair Palefroi" in general estimation, there is neither purely romantic interest, as in the Palfrey, nor the interest of "the pity of it," as in the piece just quoted; but an ethical purpose, showing out of the mouth of babes and sucklings the danger of filial ingratitude. But, as a general rule, there is little that is serious in these frequently graceless but generally amusing compositions. There is a curious variety about them, and incidentally a crowd of lively touches of common life. The fisherman of the Seine starts for his day's work or sport with oar and tackle; the smith plies the forge; the bath plays a considerable part in the stories, and we learn that it was not an unknown habit to eat when bathing, which seems to be an unwise attempt to double luxuries. A short sketch of mediaeval catering might be got out of the _fabliaux_, where figure not merely the usual dainties--capons, partridges, pies well peppered--but eels salted, dried, and then roasted, or more probably grilled, as we grill kippered salmon. Here we have a somewhat less grimy original--perhaps it was actually the original--of Skelton's "Tunning of Elinor Rumming"; and in many places other patterns, the later reproductions of which are well known to readers of Boccaccio and the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ of La Fontaine and his followers. Title after title--"Du Prestre Crucifie," "Du Prestre et d'Alison," &c.--tells us that the clergy are going to be lampooned. Sometimes, where the fun is no worse than childish, it is childish enough--plays on words, jokes on English mispronunciation of French, and so forth. But it very seldom, though it is sometimes intolerably nasty, approaches the sheer drivel which appears in some English would-be comic writing of the Middle Ages, or the very early Renaissance--such, for instance, as most of that in the prose "Pleasant Historie of Thomas of Reading,"[135] which the late Mr Thoms was pleased to call a romance. Yet the actual stuff of "Thomas of Reading" is very much of the nature of the _fabliaux_ (except of course the tragical part, which happens to be the only good part), and so the difference of the handling is noteworthy. So it is also in English verse-work of the kind--the "Hunting of the Hare"[136] and the like--to take examples necessarily a little later than our time.