“After eating your bread for so long a time, we should be ungrateful
indeed if we did not serve you.”
She made excellent show of not understanding the matter, thinking by
this seriousness to confound them; but they pursued their discourse
in such sort that she saw that all was discovered. So she immediately
devised a means of baffling them, for, having lost honour and
conscience, she would in no wise take to herself the shame that they
thought to bring upon her. On the contrary, like one who set her
pleasure before all earthly honour, she neither changed her countenance
nor treated them worse than before, whereat they were so confounded,
that they carried away in their own bosoms the shame they had thought to
bring upon her.
“If, ladies, you do not consider this story enough to prove that women
are as bad as men, I will seek out others of the same kind to relate to
you. Nevertheless I think that this one will suffice to show you that a
woman who has lost shame is far bolder to do evil than a man.”
There was not a woman in the company that heard this story, who did not
make as many signs of the cross as if all the devils in hell were before
her eyes. However, Oisille said--
“Ladies, let us humble ourselves at hearing of so terrible a
circumstance, and the more so as she who is forsaken by God becomes like
him with whom she unites; for even as those who cleave to God have His
spirit within them, so is it with those that cleave to His opposite,
whence it comes that nothing can be more brutish than one devoid of the
Spirit of God.”
“Whatever the poor lady may have done,” said Ennasuite, “I nevertheless
cannot praise the men who boasted of their imprisonment.”
“It is my opinion,” said Longarine, “that a man finds it as troublesome
to conceal his good fortune as to pursue it. There is never a hunter but
delights to wind his horn over his quarry, nor lover but would fain have
credit for his conquest.”
“That,” said Simontault, “is an opinion which I would hold to be
heretical in presence of all the Inquisitors of the Faith, for there are
more men than women that can keep a secret, and I know right well that
some might be found who would rather forego their happiness than have
any human being know of it. For this reason has the Church, like a wise
mother, ordained men to be confessors and not women, seeing that the
latter can conceal nothing.”
“That is not the reason,” said Oisille; “it is because women are such
enemies of vice that they would not grant absolution with the same
readiness as is shown by men, and would be too stern in their penances.”
“If they were as stern in their penances,” said Dagoucin, “as they are
in their responses, they would reduce far more sinners to despair than
they would draw to salvation; and so the Church has in every sort well
ordained. But, for all that, I will not excuse the gentlemen who thus
boasted of their prison, for never was a man honoured by speaking evil
of a woman.”
“Since they all fared alike,” said Hircan, “it seems to me that they did
well to console one another.”
“Nay,” said Geburon, “they should never have acknowledged it for the
sake of their own honour. The books of the Round Table (7) teach us that
it is not to the honour of a worthy knight to overcome one that is good
for naught.”
7 Queen Margaret was well acquainted with these (see
_ante_, vol. iii. p. 48). In a list drawn up after her
father’s death, of the two hundred volumes of books in his
library, a most remarkable one for the times, we find
specified several copies of “Lancelot,” “Tristan,” &c, some
in MS. with miniatures and illuminated letters, and others
printed on parchment. Besides numerous religious writings,
volumes of Aristotle, Ovid, Mandeville, Dante, the
Chronicles of St. Denis, and the “Book of the Great Khan,
bound in cloth of gold,” the library contained various works
of a character akin to that of the _Heptameron_. For
instance, a copy of the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ in print;
a French translation of Poggio’s _Facetio_, also in print,
and two copies of Boccaccio in MS., one of them bound in
purple velvet, and richly illuminated, each page having a
border of blue and silver. This last if still in existence
would be very valuable.--Eu.
“I am amazed,” said Longarine, “that the unhappy woman did not die of
shame in presence of her captives.”
“Those who have lost shame,” said Oisille, “can hardly ever recover it,
excepting, however, she that has forgotten it through deep love. Of such
have I seen many return.”
“I think,” said Hircan, “that you must have seen the return of as many
as went, for deep love in a woman is difficult to find.”
“I am not of your opinion,” said Longarine; “I think that there are some
women who have loved to death.”
“So exceedingly do I desire to hear a tale of that kind,” said Hircan,
“that I give you my vote in order to learn of a love in women that I had
never deemed them to possess.”
“Well, if you hearken,” said Longarine, “you will believe, and will see
that there is no stronger passion than love. But while it prompts one
to almost impossible enterprises for the sake of winning some portion
of happiness in this life, so does it more than any other passion reduce
that man or woman to despair, who loses the hope of gaining what is
longed for. This indeed you will see from the following story.”
[Illustration: 232.jpg Tailpiece]
[Illustration: 233a.jpg The Lady killing herself on the Death of her Lover]
[The Lady killing herself on the Death of her Lover]
[Illustration: 233.jpg Page Image]
_TALE L_.
_Messire John Peter for a long time wooed in vain a
neighbour of his by whom he was sorely smitten, and to
divert his humour withdrew for a few days from the sight of
her; but this brought so deep a melancholy upon him that the
doctors ordered him to be bled. The lady, who knew whence
his distemper proceeded, then thought to save his life, but
did indeed hasten his death, by granting him that which she
had always refused. Then, reflecting that she was herself
the cause of the loss of so perfect a lover, she dealt
herself a sword-thrust that made her a partner in his fate_.
(1)
In the town of Cremona not long ago there lived a gentleman called
Messire John Peter, (2) who had long loved a lady that dwelt near to his
own house; but strive as he might he was never able to have of her the
reply that he desired, albeit he loved her with his whole heart. Being
greatly grieved and troubled at this, the poor gentleman withdrew into
his lodging with the resolve that he would no longer vainly pursue the
happiness the quest of which was devouring his life; and accordingly, to
divert his humour, he passed a few days without seeing her. This caused
him to fall into deep sadness, so that his countenance was no longer the
same. His kinsfolk summoned the doctors, who, finding that his face was
growing yellow, thought that he had some obstruction of the liver and
ordered a blood-letting.
1 The incidents here narrated probably occurred in or about
1544.--L.