answer, "And who be they which have told my Lord I would take naught?" Then being surrounded by a countless cloud of flies (for 'twas summer time), he began to hunt them with his hand, as we see pages and lackeys and children do, a-trying to catch them; and having taken two with one swoop, he cried, making a funny gesture more readily imagined than described, "Go tell my Lord," said he, "what I have taken for love of him, and that now I'm away to the kingdom of the flies," and so saying and turning him round to the other side of the bed, the merry rascal did expire.
As to this, I have heard sundry philosophers declare that folk do very often at the moment of death remember them of those things they have the most loved in life, and tell of these; so gentlemen, soldiers, sportsmen, artisans, all in fact, very near, according to their former occupation, do say some word thereof when a-dying. This is a fact often noted no less in past time than at the present day.
Women in like wise do often out with a similar rigmarole,—whores just as much as honest dames. So have I heard speak of a certain lady, of very good quality too, which on her death-bed did exult to spit out all about her divers intrigues, naughtinesses and past pleasures, to such purpose that she told more thereof than ever folk had known before, albeit she had always been suspected as a desperate wanton. This revelation she may have made, either in a dream possibly, or else because truth, that can never be hid, did constrain her thereto, or mayhap because she was fain so to discharge her conscience. Anyhow, she did actually, with clear conscience and true repentance, confess and ask forgiveness for her sins, detail-
[88]
