and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in Strasburg to hold them. The abbess of Quedlingberg , who with the four great dignitaries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior canoness, had that week come to Strasburg to consult the university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket-holes⸻was ill all the night.
The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night thro’ for it⸺there was no keeping a limb still amongst them⸺in short, they got up like so many ghosts.
The penitentiaries of the third order of saint Francis ⸺the nuns of mount Calvary ⸺the Præmonstratenses ⸺the Clunienses ⸺the Carthusians , and all the severer orders of nuns who lay that night in blankets or haircloth, were still in a worse condition than the abbess of Quedlingberg —by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from one side of their beds to the other the whole night long⸺the several sisterhoods had scratch’d and maul’d themselves all to death⸺they got out of their beds almost flay’d alive—everybody thought saint Antony had visited them for probation with his fire⸺they had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins.
The nuns of saint Ursula acted the wisest—they never attempted to go to bed at all.
The dean of Strasburg , the prebendaries, the capitulars and domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case of butter’d buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint Ursula’s example.⸻