36 COCOA : ALL ABOUT IT. 



" A gentlewoman, with whom I was well acquainted, was 

 commonly censured to have prescribed such a cup of Chocolatte to 

 be ministered by the Page, which poisoned him who so rigorously 

 had forbidden Chocolatte to be drunk in the Church. My self 

 heard this gentlewoman say that the women had no reason to 

 grieve for him, and that she judged, he being such an enemy to 

 Chocolatte in the Church, that which he had drunk in his house 

 had not agreed with his body. And it became afterwards a 

 Proverbe in that country, 'Beware of the Chocolatte of Chiapa.' 



"The gentlewoman that was suspected of the death of the 

 Bishop had often used to send me boxes of Chocolatte, which I 

 willingly received of her, judging it to be a kind of gratuity for 

 the paines I took in teaching her son Latin ; untill one day she 

 sent unto mee a faire plantin, wrapped up in a handkerchief buried 

 in sweet jassimines and roses; and looking further upon it, I found 

 worked upon it with a knife the fashion of a heart with two blind 

 Cupid's arrows sticking in it, discovering unto my heart the 

 thoughts of the poisoner that sent it. I thought it a good warning 

 to be wary of receiving such presents, or Chocolatte, from such 

 hands, and so returned unto her again her plantin with this short 

 rhyme cut out with a knife upon the skinne, ' Fruta tan fria, amor 

 no cria,' as much as to say, ' Fruit so cold, takes no hold.' 



" I remembered the Bishop's Chocolatte and so was wary, and 

 staid not long after in that poisoning and wicked city, which truly 

 deserves no better relation than what I have given of the simple 

 Dons and the Chocolatte-confectioning Dorenas." 



No doubt, the Priests were blameworthy in bartering 

 the priestly powers of the Confessional for the earthly wealth 



