The company agreed to this proposal, and as they were going Oisille said:—
“If any one gives God thanks for having told the truth to-day, Saffredent ought to implore His forgiveness for having raked up so vile a story against the ladies.”
“By my word,” replied Saffredent, “what I told you was true, albeit I only had it upon hearsay. But were I to tell you all that I have myself seen of women, you would have need to make even more signs of the cross than the priests do in consecrating a church.”
“Repentance is a long way off,” said Geburon, “when confession only increases the sin.”
“Since you have so bad an opinion of women,” said Parlamente, “they ought to deprive you of their honourable society and friendship.”
“There are some women,” he returned, “who have acted towards me so much in accordance with your advice, in keeping me far away from things that are honourable and just, that could I do and say worse to them, I should not neglect doing so, in order that I might stir them up to revenge me on her who does me so much wrong.”
Whilst he spoke these words, Parlamente put on her mask (5) and went with the others into the church, where they found that although the bell had rung for vespers, there was not a single monk, present to say them.
5 Little masks hiding only the upper part of the face, and
called tourets-de-nez, were then frequently worn by ladies
of rank. Some verses by Christine de Pisan show them to have
been in vogue already in the fourteenth century. In the MS.
copy of Margaret’s poem of La Coche presented to the
Duchess of Etampes, the ladies in the different miniatures
are frequently shown wearing masks of the kind referred to.
Some curious particulars concerning these tourets will be
found in M. Léon do Laborde’s Le Palais Mazarin et les
grandes habitations de ville et de campagne au XVIIe
Siècle, Paris, 1846, 8vo, p. 314.—L.
The monks, indeed, had heard that the company assembled in the meadow to tell the pleasantest tales imaginable, and being fonder of pleasure than of their prayers, they had gone and hidden themselves in a ditch, where they lay flat on their bellies behind a very thick hedge; and they had there listened so eagerly to the stories that they had not heard the ringing of the monastery bell, as was soon clearly shown, for they returned in such great haste that they almost lacked breath to begin the saying of vespers.
After the service, when they were asked why they had been so late and had chanted so badly, they confessed that they had been to listen to the tales; whereupon, since they were so desirous of hearing them, it was granted that they might sit and listen at their ease every day behind the hedge.