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to have forgotten all about it, and were disputing together with flushed faces and angry gestures. It was easy to see by their dress and manner that they were two of those wandering students who formed about this time so enormous a multitude in every country in Europe. The one was long and thin, with melancholy features, while the other was fat and sleek, with a loud voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid.

      “Come hither, good youth,” he cried, “come hither! Vultus ingenui puer.[117] Heed not the face of my good coz here. Fœnum habet in cornu[118], as Dan Horace has it; but I warrant him harmless for all that.”

      “Stint your bull’s bellowing!” exclaimed the other. “If it come to Horace, I have a line in my mind: Loquaces si sapiat[119] – — How doth it run? The English o’t being that a man of sense should ever avoid a great talker. That being so, if all were men of sense, then thou wouldst be a lonesome man, coz.”

      “Alas! Dicon, I fear that your logic is as bad as your philosophy or your divinity – and God wot it would be hard to say a worse word than that for it. For, hark ye: granting, propter argumentum[120], that I am a talker, then the true reasoning runs that since all men of sense should avoid me, and thou hast not avoided me, but art at the present moment eating herrings with me under a holly-bush, ergo[121] you are no man of sense, which is exactly what I have been dinning into your long ears ever since I first clapped eyes on your sunken chops.”

      “Tut, tut!” cried the other. “Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand, first, however, that there are certain conditions attached to it.”

      “I had hoped,” said Alleyne, falling into the humour of the twain, “that a tranchoir of bread and a draught of milk might be attached to it.”

      “Hark to him, hark to him!” cried the little fat man. “It is ever thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating sickness. I exude it around me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man never stepped, and yet within the week you have said three things which might pass, and one thing the day we left Pordingbridge which I should not have been ashamed of myself.”

      “Enough, rattlepate, enough!” said the other. “The milk you shall have and the bread also, friend, together with the herring, but you must hold the scales between us.”

      “If he hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother,” cried the fat man. “But I pray you, good youth, to tell us whether you are a learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have studied at Oxenford or at Paris.”

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      Примечания

      1

      the year after the Battle of Bannockburn – битва, в которой шотландцы победили англичан (1314 г.)

      2

      Ave – (лат.) молитва «Богородице, Дево, радуйся»

      3

      Credo – (лат.) молитва «Верую»

      4

      radix malorum – (лат.) корень зла

      5

      Gesta beati Benedicti – (лат.) «Деяния блаженного Бенедикта»

      6

      prie-Dieu – (фр.) скамеечка для молитвы

      7

      to wit – (уст.) а именно

      8

      piscatorium – (лат.) пруд

      9

      Pater – (лат.) молитва «Отче наш»

      10

      James the Less – один из двенадцати апостолов

      11

      verderer – (уст.) лесничий

      12

      Lauds and double Matins – (церк.) молитвы «Хвала Господу» и заутреня

      13

      pricked up their ears – (разг.) навострили уши

      14

      for a man of my inches – (уст.) для мужчины моих габаритов

      15

      that none might take him at a vantage – (уст.) чтобы никто не застал его врасплох

      16

      in no very good humour at the interruption – (уст.) недовольный тем, что его прервали

      17

      coif – (фр.) головной убор, сделанный из кожи, покрытой металлическими пластинами

      18

      three hides – (уст.) три надела земли по 120 акров

      19

      Socman – (уст.) владелец

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