60 THE PLEASANT HISTORY OF CHAP.

keep holy days, give alms, and leave your
sinful and evil life, your theft, and your treason,
and then no doubt you shall attain mercy.’

The fox promised to perform all this, and so
they went together towards the court; but a
little beside the way as they went, stood a
religious house of nuns, where many geese,
hens, and capons went without the wall; and
as they went talking, the fox led Griméard out
of his right way to that place. And finding
the poultry walking without the barn, amongst
which was a fat young capon, which strayed
a little from his fellows, he suddenly leaped at
and caught him by the feathers, which flew
about his ears, but the capon escaped, which
Grimbard seeing, said, ‘Accursed man, what
will you do, will you for a silly pullet fall again
into all your sins? mischief itself would not
do it.’

To which Reynard answered, ‘Pardon me,
dear nephew, I had forgotten myself, but I
will ask forgiveness, and mine eye shall no
more wander’; and then they turned over a
little bridge; but the fox still glanced his eye
toward the poultry, and could by no means
refrain it, for the ill that was bred in his bones
still stuck to his flesh, and his mind carried his