The officers pulled them out:he looked like Cupid with his arrow,and she like Venus with her quiver.Both of them were as naked as the day they were born because,when the officers had knocked,they were in bed,kissing the holy relics,and with the alarm they didn't have a chance to pick up their clothes.And,to hide,they had climbed into that empty cask,where they continued their devout exercise.
Everyone stood there,agape at the beauty of these two.Then they threw two cloaks over them and put them in the custody of two officers,and they started looking for the others.The constable discovered a large earthen jug filled with oil,and inside he found a man fully dressed and up to his chest in the oil.As soon as they saw him he tried to jump out,but he didn't do it so agilely that the jug and he both didn't tip over.The oil flew out and covered the officers from head to foot,staining them without any respect.They stood there cursing the job and the whore who taught it to them.The oiled man saw that instead of grabbing him they were avoiding him like the plague,and he began to run away.
The constable shouted,"Stop him!Stop him!"But they all made room for him to go past.He went out a back door,pissing oil.What he wrung from his clothes he used to light the lamp of Our Lady of Afflictions for more than a month.
The law officers stood there,bathed in oil,and cursing whoever had brought them to the place.And so was I,because they said I was the pander and they were going to tar and feather me.They went out like fritters from the frying pan,leaving a trail wherever they walked.They were so irate that they swore to God and to the four holy Gospels that they would hang everyone they found.We prisoners trembled.They went over to the storeroom to look for the others.They went in,and from the top of a door a bag of flour was poured down on them,blinding them all.
They shouted,"Stop,in the name of the law!"
If they tried to open their eyes,they were immediately closed up with flour and water.The men holding us let go so they could help the constable who was yelling like a madman.They had hardly gotten inside when their eyes were covered with flour and water,too.They were wandering around like they were playing blindman's bluff,bumping into and clouting each other so much they broke their jaws and teeth.
When we saw that the officers were done in,we threw ourselves on them,and they attacked each other so wildly that they fell,exhausted,to the floor while blows and kicks rained and hailed down on top of them.Finally,they didn't shout or move any more than dead men.If one of them tried to open his mouth,it was immediately filled with flour and stuffed like a capon at a poultry farm.We bound their hands and feet and carried them along like hogs to the wine cellar.We threw them in the oil like fish to be fried,and they squirmed around like pigs in a mire.Then we locked up the doors,and we all went home.
The owner of that one had been in the country,and when he came back he found the doors locked and that no one answered when he called.A niece of his had loaned out his house for that feast,and she had gone back to her father's,afraid of what her uncle would do.The man had the doors unlocked,and when he saw his house sown with flour and anointed with oil,he flew into a rage and began shouting like a drunkard.He went to the wine cellar and found his oil spilled all over and the law officers wallowing in it.He was so angry to see his home devastated that he picked up a cudgel and hammered away on the constable and the officers,leaving them half dead.He called his neighbors over,and they helped drag them out to the street,and there boys threw mud,garbage,and filth on the officers and the constable.They were so full of flour no one recognized them.When they came to and found themselves in the street,free,they took to their heels.Then people could very well have said,"Stop the name of the law--it's running away!"
They left behind their cloaks,swords,and daggers and didn't dare go back for them so that no one would find out what had happened.
The owner of the house kept everything that was left behind as compensation for the damage that had been done.When I came out,ready to leave,I found a cloak that wasn't at all bad,and I took it and left mine there.I thanked God I had come out ahead this time (something new for me),since I was always getting the short end of things.I went to the house of the tailor's wife.I found the house in an uproar,and the tailor,her husband,was thrashing her with a stick for having come back alone without her veil or shoes and for running down the street with more than a hundred boys after her.I got there at just the right time because,as soon as the tailor saw me,he left his wife and sailed into me with a blow that finished off the few teeth I still had.Then he kicked me ten or twelve times in the belly,and that made me throw up what little I had eaten.
"You damned pimp!"he cried."You mean you're not ashamed to come back to my house?I'll give you enough payment to settle every score--past and present."
He called his servants,and they brought a blanket and tossed me in it to their own pleasure,which was my grief.They left me for dead and laid me out on a bench like that.It was nighttime when I recovered my senses,and I tried to get up and walk.But I fell to the ground and broke an arm.The next morning I made my way to the door of a church,little by little,and there I begged with a pitiful voice from the people going in.
