THE SCENE: The author of this passage wants to make sure that we understand that Hugh Le Puiset was a very, very, very, very, very bad man.
THE TEXT: Just as very tasty fruit from a fruitful tree reproduces its fragrant taste if a shoot is transplanted, in the same way evil and wickedness, qualities that should have been rooted out, continue to sprout forth and produce one man out of the branch of many wretched men. He was like a snake amid eels, which torments and stirs them up and enjoys the taste of its own sort of bitterness, as if it were absinthe. Hugh of Le Puiset was of such a kind, a wretched man, made rich only by virtue of his own tyranny and that of his ancestors. He succeeded his uncle Guy in the lordship of Le Puiset. And Hugh proved to be a worthless shoot who took after his father with every kind of evil, but “those whom his father beat with whips, he, more despicable than his parent, beat with scorpions.”
– The Deeds of Louis the Fat, Suger, 12th Century AD
