“You may well deem yourselves good servants and diligent guards. He as to whom you were to be so careful has been speaking to me the whole day, and you have suffered him to do so. Your good master, who puts so much trust in you, should give you the stick rather than give you wages.”
When the gentleman who had charge of her heard these words he was so angry that he could not reply, but calling two others to him, set spurs to his horse, and rode so hard that he at last reached the friar, who on perceiving his pursuers had fled as fast as he could. However, the poor fellow was caught, being less well mounted than they were. He was quite ignorant of what it all meant, and cried them mercy, taking off his hood in order that he might entreat them with bareheaded humility. Thereupon they realised that he was not the man whom they sought, and that their mistress had been mocking them. And this she did with even better effect upon their return to her.
“You are fitting fellows,” said she, “to receive ladies in your charge. You suffer them to talk to any stranger, and then, believing whatever they may say, you go and insult the ministers of God.”
After all these jests they arrived at the place that her husband had commanded, and here her two sisters-in-law, with the husband of one of them, kept her in great subjection.
In the meanwhile her husband had heard how his ring had been pledged for fifteen hundred crowns, whereat he was exceedingly wrathful, and in order to save his wife’s honour and to get back the ring, he bade his sisters tell her to redeem it, he himself paying the fifteen hundred crowns.
She cared nought for the ring since her lover had the money, but she wrote to him saying that she was compelled by her husband to redeem it, and in order that he might not suppose she was doing this through any lessening of her affection, she sent him a diamond which her mistress had given, her, and which she liked better than any ring she had.
Thereupon the gentleman forwarded her the merchant’s bond right willingly; deeming himself fortunate in having fifteen hundred crowns and a diamond, (3) and at being still assured of his lady’s favour. However, as long as the husband lived, he had no means of communing with her save by writing.
When the husband died, expecting to find her still what she had promised him to be, he came in all haste to ask her in marriage; but he found that his long absence had gained him a rival who was loved better than himself. His sorrow at this was so great that he henceforth shunned the companionship of ladies and sought out scenes of danger, and so at last died in as high repute as any young man could have. (4)
3 The gentleman deemed it only natural that the woman he
honoured with his love should present him with money. In the
seventeenth century similar opinions were held, if one may
judge by some passages in Dancourt’s comedies, and by the
presents which the Duchess of Cleveland made to Henry
Jerrayn and John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough,
as chronicled in the Memoirs of the Count de Gramont.—M.
4 Brantôme tells a somewhat similar tale to this in his
Vies des Dames Galantes (Dis. I.): “I knew,” he writes,
“two ladies of the Court, sisters-in-law to one another, one
of whom was married to a courtier, high in favour and very
skilful, but who did not make as much account of his wife as
by reason of her birth he should have done, for he spoke to
her in public as he might have spoken to a savage, and
treated her most harshly. She patiently endured this for
some time, until indeed her husband lost some of his credit,
when, watching for and taking the opportunity, she quickly
repaid him for all the disdain that he had shown her. And
her sister-in-law imitated her and did likewise; for having
been married when of a young and tender age, her husband
made no more account of her than if she had been a little
girl.... But she, advancing in years, feeling her heart beat
and becoming conscious of her beauty, paid him back in the
same coin, and made him a present of a fine pair of horns,
by way of interest for the past”—Lalanne’s OEuvres de
Brantôme, vol. ix. p. 157.—L.
“In this tale, ladies, I have tried, without sparing our own sex, to show husbands that wives of spirit yield rather to vengeful wrath than to the sweetness of love. The lady of whom I have told you withstood the latter for a great while, but in the end succumbed to despair. Nevertheless, no woman of virtue should yield as she did, for, happen what may, no excuse can be found for doing wrong. The greater the temptations, the more virtuous should one show oneself, by resisting and overcoming evil with good, instead of returning evil for evil; and this all the more because the evil we think to do to another often recoils upon ourselves. Happy are those women who display the heavenly virtues of chastity, gentleness, meekness, and long-suffering.”