Willy Gris: Favorite Quotes

"The famous Willy Griskin was a Fastolf too. Griskin. It's a little pig. Will's father was taxed out of existence, and he left the young Will this pigling as his patrimony. Of course the boy's contemporaries laughed. The Knight of the Griskin, they called him, Little Willy Gris. So Will sold his pig and emigrated on the proceeds. In France, despite the French, he advanced himself on the back of that pigling money until he was in a position to marry a marriable woman--the widow of a banker. He was rolling in it now, and the more money he made the more the world loved him. This did not escape his notice. Sitting brooding on the fact, he had one room in his house painted and decorated by an artist called Nicholas Pisano. Will kept the key of this room on a chain which he wore around his neck, and he never let anyone in there ever, not even his wife....It was his habit also, whenever he came home from seeing great men, to neglect all other business and go straight to his secret chamber. He'd stay there for hours and then come out to his family with a philosophical smile. Everyone burned to know what was in the room. His wife begged him to show them. At last, thoroughly beseiged, Will Fastolf unlocked the door. The walls of the room were white and the floor was white, but on the cieling of the room was painted the picture of a pigling and a little boy leading it by a string, and the words written:



Willy Gris, Willy Gris--

Think what you was, and what you is!"

--from Falstaff, by Robert Nye.