She shal have nede to wasshe awey the rede,
Thogh she a font-ful water with hir lede.
The marriage festivities are passed over lightly, and then comes a characteristic interpolation which Chaucer borrows from quite a different source, i. e. from Innocent III’s De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis:—
O sodeyn wo! that ever art successour
To worldly blisse, spreynd[64] with bitternesse;
Th’ende of the joye of our worldly labour;
Wo occupieth the fyn of our gladnesse.[65]
Herke this conseil for thy sikernesse,
Upon thy gladde day have in thy minde
The unwar wo or harm that comth behinde.
Then come a few brief words describing the massacre and Constance’s unhappy fate, followed by the beautiful prayer of Constance when she finds herself alone on “the salte see,” of which no trace at all is to be found in Trivet. Here the poet breaks off to discuss the miraculous element in the story. Nothing is more characteristic of Chaucer than this habit of pausing to consider some abstract question raised by what he is relating—it is even more conspicuously evident in the Nonne Preestes Tale than it is here, where such a discussion is in keeping with the spirit of the poem, and where he shows himself content to take the simple explanation of religion.
The episode of Elda and Hermingild is given very simply and shortly, Elda’s name not being mentioned. Then comes the false accusation brought against Constance by the treacherous knight, and here we see Chaucer’s power of painting a dramatic situation in a few words. He tells us how Constance is brought before the king and gives her brief prayer to the God “that savedest Susanne,” and then with a sudden vivid simile drives home to us her agony of suspense:—
Have ye nat seyn som tyme a pale face
Among a prees, of him that hath be lad
Toward his deeth, where-as him gat no grace,
And swich a colour in his face hath had,
Men mighte knowe his face, that was bestad,
Amonges alle faces in that route:
So stant Custance, and loketh hir aboute.
Her marriage with Alle, Chaucer dismisses even more hastily than her marriage with the Soldan:—
Me list nat of the chaf nor of the stree
Maken so long a tale as of the corn.
What sholde I tellen of the royaltee
At mariage, or which cours gooth biforn
Who bloweth in a trompe or in an horn?
The fruit of every tale is for to seye,
They ete, and drinke, and daunce, and singe, and pleye.
The mishap of the messenger causes him to break out into an invective against drunkenness, and then follows one of the most wonderful passages in the whole poem, that in which he describes Constance going down to the boat “with deedly pale face,” her baby weeping in her arms. Chaucer’s love of children manifests itself again and again in his poems. The tenderness of the mother’s
“Pees litel sone, I wol do thee non harm”