Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,
Until their gallants were half killed:
But when their bones were drubbed so sore
They durst not win one combat more,
The ladies’ hearts began to melt,
Subdued by blows their lovers felt.
So Spanish heroes with their lances
At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”
However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out of her bower and into his saddle.
The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife Tiphania.