TALE CONTENTS
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[ FIRST DAY. ] [Tale I.] The pitiful history of a Proctor of Alençon, named St. Aignan, and of his wife, who caused her husband to assassinate her lover, the son of the Lieutenant-General [Tale II.] The fate of the wife of a muleteer of Amboise, who suffered herself to be killed by her servant rather than sacrifice her chastity [Tale III.] The revenge taken by the Queen of Naples, wife to King Alfonso, for her husband’s infidelity with a gentleman’s wife [Tale IV.] The ill success of a Flemish gentleman who was unable to obtain, either by persuasion or force, the love of a great Princess [Tale V.] How a boatwoman of Coulon, near Nyort, contrived to escape from the vicious designs of two Grey Friars [Tale VI.] How the wife of an old valet of the Duke of Alençon’s succeeded in saving her lover from her husband, who was blind of one eye [Tale VII.] The craft of a Parisian merchant, who saved the reputation of the daughter by offering violence to the mother |
PREFACE.
The first printed version of the famous Tales of Margaret of Navarre, issued in Paris in the year 1558, under the title of “Histoires des Amans Fortunez,” was extremely faulty and imperfect. It comprised but sixty-seven of the seventy-two tales written by the royal author, and the editor, Pierre Boaistuau, not merely changed the order of those narratives which he did print, but suppressed numerous passages in them, besides modifying much of Margaret’s phraseology. A somewhat similar course was adopted by Claude Gruget, who, a year later, produced what claimed to be a complete version of the stories, to which he gave the general title of the Heptameron, a name they have ever since retained. Although he reinstated the majority of the tales in their proper sequence, he still suppressed several of them, and inserted others in their place, and also modified the Queen’s language after the fashion set by Boaistuau. Despite its imperfections, however, Gruget’s version was frequently reprinted down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it served as the basis of the numerous editions of the Heptameron in beau langage, as the French phrased it, which then began to make their appearance. It served, moreover, in the one or the other form, for the English and other translations of the work, and down to our own times was accepted as the standard version of the Queen of Navarre’s celebrated tales. Although it was known that various contemporary MSS. were preserved at the French National Library in Paris, no attempt was made to compare Gruget’s faulty version with the originals until the Société des Bibliophiles Français entrusted this delicate task to M. Le Roux de Lincy, whose labours led to some most valuable discoveries, enabling him to produce a really authentic version of Margaret’s admired masterpiece, with the suppressed tales restored, the omitted passages reinstated, and the Queen’s real language given for the first time in all its simple gracefulness.