father and mother that he had given to children that played with him, and of that that at the plays and games he had victory by fraud. Also he confessed him of stealing of pears off a pear tree standing nigh his vineyard when he was sixteen years old. In the same book he accused him of that little delectation which sometime he felt in eating, and said: ’Thou hast taught me that I should take nourishing of meat like a medicine. Drunkenness is far from me; I beseech thee. Lord, have mercy on me, that it approach not me. And, Lord, who is he, but sometime he is ravished out of his meats? Who that it be that is not, certainly is much perfect, it am not I, for I am a sinful man.' No man, saith he, ought to be sure in his life, for it is called all temptation; that is to wit, that he may be made of the worse the better and not of the better the worse. And he confessed him also of hearing, saying: 'The delights and voluptuosities of mine ears have bowed and subdued me, but thou hast unbound and delivered me; for when it happed me that the song more moved me than the thing sung, I confess me sore to have sinned, and then I would that I had not heard him that so sang.' And then he accused him of seeing; of that he saw sometime gladly the hound running, and when he went sometime by adventure by the fields, he beheld gladly hunting, and when he was at home he beheld oftimes the spincoppes or spiders taking flies by the nets of their cobwebs: hereof he confessed him to our Lord, for sometime they took from him good thoughts and letted him of some good works. And he accused him of the appetite of
