At Dinner,
The Husband Purposely Gave The Shoulder-Bone Of The Ram, Properly
Cleaned, To His Wife, Who Was Also Well Skilled In This Art, For Her
Examination; When, Having For A Short Time Examined The Secret
Marks, She Smiled, And Threw The Oracle Down On The Table.
Her
husband, dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling,
and the explanation of the matter.
Overcome by his entreaties, she
answered: "The man to whose fold this ram belongs, has an
adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest
with his own grandson." The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected
countenance, replied: "You deliver, indeed, an oracle supported by
too much truth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as the
ignominy you have published redounds to my own injury." The woman,
thus detected, and unable to dissemble her confusion, betrayed the
inward feelings of her mind by external signs; shame and sorrow
urging her by turns, and manifesting themselves, now by blushes, now
by paleness, and lastly (according to the custom of women), by
tears. The shoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain
person, instead of a ram's - both being alike, when cleaned; who,
observing for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed, "Unhappy
cattle, that never was multiplied! unhappy, likewise, the owner of
the cattle, who never had more than three or four in one flock!"
Many persons, a year and a half before the event, foresaw, by the
means of shoulder-bones, the destruction of their country, after the
decease of king Henry I., and, selling all their possessions, left
their homes, and escaped the impending ruin.
It happened also in Flanders, from whence this people came, that a
certain man sent a similar bone to a neighbour for his inspection;
and the person who carried it, on passing over a ditch, broke wind,
and wished it in the nostrils of the man on whose account he was
thus troubled. The person to whom the bone was taken, on
examination, said, "May you have in your own nose, that which you
wished to be in mine." In our time, a soothsayer, on the inspection
of a bone, discovered not only a theft, and the manner of it, but
the thief himself, and all the attendant circumstances; he heard
also the striking of a bell, and the sound of a trumpet, as if those
things which were past were still performing. It is wonderful,
therefore, that these bones, like all unlawful conjurations, should
represent, by a counterfeit similitude to the eyes and ears, things
which are passed, as well as those which are now going on.
CHAPTER XII
Of Penbroch
The province of Penbroch adjoins the southern part of the territory
of Ros, and is separated from it by an arm of the sea. Its
principal city, and the metropolis of Demetia, is situated on an
oblong rocky eminence, extending with two branches from Milford
Haven, from whence it derived the name of Penbroch, which signifies
the head of the aestuary.
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