_Two Grey Friars, while listening to secrets that did not concern them, misunderstood the language of a butcher and endangered their lives_. (1) Between Nyort and Fors there is a village called Grip, (2) which belongs to the Lord of Fors. 1 This story is evidently founded upon fact; the incidents must have occurred prior to 1530.--L. 2 Gript, a little village on the Courance, eight miles south of Niort (Deux-Sèvres), produces some of the best white wine in this part of France. Its church of St. Aubin stood partly in the diocese of Poitiers, partly in that of Saintes, the altar being in the former, and the door in the latter one. This is the only known instance of the kind in France. Fors, a few miles distant from Gript, was a fief which Catherine, daughter of Artus de Vivonne, brought in marriage to James Poussart, knight, who witnessed the Queen of Navarre’s marriage contract, signing himself, “Seigneur de Fors, Bailly du Berry.” He is often mentioned in the Queen’s letters.--See Génin’s _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_, pp. 243-244, 258-259, 332.--L. and M. It happened one day that two Grey Friars, on their way from Nyort, arrived very late at this place, Grip, and lodged in the house of a butcher. Now, as there was nothing between their host’s room and their own but a badly joined partition of wood, they had a mind to listen to what the husband might say to his wife when he was in bed with her, and accordingly they set their ears close to the head of their host’s bed. He, having no thought of his lodgers, spoke privately with his wife concerning their household, and said to her-- “I must rise betimes in the morning, sweetheart, and see after our Grey Friars. One of them is very fat, and must be killed; we will salt him forthwith and make a good profit off him.” And although by “Grey Friars” he meant his pigs, the two poor brethren, on hearing this plot, felt sure that they themselves were spoken of, (3) and so waited with great fear and trembling for the dawn. 3 The butcher doubtless called his pigs “Grey Friars” in allusion to the latter’s gluttony and uncleanly habits. Pigs are even nowadays termed _moines_ (monks) by the peasantry in some parts of France. Moreover, the French often render our expression “fat as a pig” by “fat as a monk.”--Ed.