In the next part of the book we see Mr Sorrell riding in the narrow streets of Salisbury. "The houses were all very low; they were all built of mud and they were all raggedly thatched, house-leeks growing from many roofs, and on others great tufts of flags. The houses were set down at all angles to the road. Sometimes it was very narrow, so that they could hardly pass, ... and the geese fled shrieking at their approach. Sometimes it was so broad that ... the great pigs would continue to wallow undisturbed in the pools of mud.... He observed noise, dirt, nauseous smells, and great crowds of importunate and ugly people. They were nearly all in ragged clothes of a grey home-spun. Some had capes, some hoods with long tails like funnels; most of the men had leather belts; most of the women went bare-legged, and were very dirty ... most of the children ... were crooked, distorted, or bore upon their faces pock-marks of a hideous kind." Nearer the cathedral were houses of stone, bales of cloth set out to attract customers, men weaving at looms, and great joints of meat upon hooks, in huge cellars below. Over these cellars were suspended signs of gilded suns, boys painted green and brown, swans and unicorns. Men emerged from the cellars in green jerkins or red surcoats furred with white lamb's-wool. Having accompanied Mr Sorrell to the door of the cathedral, his hostess, Lady Dionissia, went back to the town to buy some juice of fir-trees "said to be sovereign for hardening and strengthening the hands of warriors." Meanwhile Mr Sorrell entered the new, brilliantly coloured building, the interior roof of which was grass-green, picked out with bright golden images of angels, queens and grinning fiends. Everybody round was talking loudly, some drinking, most of them selling cherries and eggs; the monks were painting, the chapter clergy whispered and laughed, for it was blood-letting day. Mr Sorrell performs his mission with the Dean, which is to secure the Church's sanction for the Lady Dionissia to divorce her husband (the young knight of Egerton) and marry him: this is an inimitably humorous piece of satirical writing on bribery and corruption in the Church. "'It is neither decent nor in order to desire to marry a lady who is already married,' said the Dean. "'I desire to do it,' Mr Sorrell said, 'with the sanction of the church.' "'That, of course,' the Dean said seriously, 'is another matter.'" Mr Sorrell finds himself slipping all too easily into his new life and suffers periodic twinges of conscience. "'Surely it is pleasant,'" he says to his paramour on the return ride of this visit to Salisbury, "'but I cannot see that it is well, and pleasantness is not the whole of life ... are there not such things as duties, ambitions, and responsibilities?'