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Satire and wrath are curiously blended in a German manuscript of the twelfth century, in which the scribe introduces a portrait of himself hurling a missile at a venturesome mouse who is eating the monk's cheese a fine Camembert! under his very nose. In the book which he is represented as transcribing, the artist has traced the words "Pessime mus, sepius me provocas ad iram, ut te Deus perdat."
As regards behaviour, the arrangement was one bad mark for each offence, the first constituting a V B, the second a Med, the third an M, and the fourth a P, the most ominous letter of all, standing, as it did, for pessime as bad as possible and one might also say for punishment also; as whoever got a P thereby earned a whipping with that long strap, concerning which Bert had heard such alarming stories.
See the chapter entitled "Della Malitia e pessíme Conditioni del Tyranno," in Savonarola's "Tractato circa el reggimento e governo della Citta di Firenze composto ad instantia delli excelsi Signori al tempo di Giuliano Salviati, Gonfaloniere di Justitia." A more terrible picture has never been drawn by any analyst of human vice and cruelty and weakness. Guasti's edition of the Rime, p. 26.
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