“There was a clerk, one Lucius, A comely, famous man; Of every wit some what he can, Out-take that him lacketh rule, His own estate to guide and rule—”
So he took to riotous living, “and was not wise in his doing”; _ergo_—
“After the need of his desert, So fell this clerke in poverte.”
The thief, whether poor man or ruined clerk, removed the treasures, was seen by the people, and brought before the emperor, on the charge of breaking the royal edict.
But the thief said: “Good my lord—suffer me to speak.”
Then said the man: “Lo, as I entered the temple of the three images, the first image extended to me its finger, as though it would say, ‘Take this ring’; but yet I doubted of its wishes, until I read the superscription, ‘My finger is generous’; then knew I that it was the pleasure of the statue to give the ring, and I obeyed and took it. Then came I to the image with the beard of gold. Methinks the maker of this had no beard; shall the creature be better than the creator? that were a plain and manifest wrong. But still I was modest, and hesitated, until the words of the inscription, ‘Let him that is beardless come to me, and I will give him one,’ forbade me to refuse to supply my own wants by the statue’s gift. As for the golden cloak, it was in pure charity that I took it away. Stone is cold, and metal is cold; the image is of the former, the cloak of the latter. In winter it was adding cold to cold, in summer it was too heavy and warm for the season. Still should I have forborne to rob the statue of its cloak, had I not seen the words, ‘I fear no one.’ Such intolerable arrogance, in a woman too, was to be punished. I took the cloak to humble the statue’s pride.” But all these excuses were useless.
“Fair sir,” replied Leo, “do you not know the law, that he who robs the statues shall die?—let the law be obeyed”; and it was as the emperor said.
“Your tale reminds me strongly of the witticisms by which the elder Dionysius justified his theft of the golden cloak of Jupiter and the beard of Æsculapius,” said Herbert.
“What, when he exchanged the cold gold garment for the warm woollen robe, and took off the beard of the son of the beardless?” remarked Thompson; “but let us hear the moral.”