Note 445 — Chapter VI · RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE (Continued)

Maitre Berthold, he relates, who had gone to Rome to seek his fortune, had only succeeded after two months in finding a place as groom to an auditor of the rota, to look after his mule. “But,” said I to him, “that’s not the sort of thing for me, a master of arts of Cologne; I can’t do things like that.” “Very well, if you won’t, I can’t help it.” “I think I shall return to my own country.... Am I to currycomb the mule and scrub the stable? Sooth, everything may go to the devil, for me!” Again, Conrad Stryldriot writes: “’Tis the devil who brought me here, and I can’t go back; there is no good fellowship here as in Germany; people aren’t sociable; if a man gets drunk once a day, they take offence and call him a pig. What is one to do? The courtesans are very dear, and not at all pretty. I tell you in all truth, in Italy the women are uncommonly ill made, spite of all their fine furbelows of silk and camlet.... They stoop, and eat garlic and are swarthy-hued.... What colour they have is paint.” (Epistolæ obscurorum virorum.)