“Ladies, let us humble ourselves at hearing of so terrible a circumstance, and the more so as she who is forsaken by God becomes like him with whom she unites; for even as those who cleave to God have His spirit within them, so is it with those that cleave to His opposite, whence it comes that nothing can be more brutish than one devoid of the Spirit of God.”
“Whatever the poor lady may have done,” said Ennasuite, “I nevertheless cannot praise the men who boasted of their imprisonment.”
“It is my opinion,” said Longarine, “that a man finds it as troublesome to conceal his good fortune as to pursue it. There is never a hunter but delights to wind his horn over his quarry, nor lover but would fain have credit for his conquest.”
“That,” said Simontault, “is an opinion which I would hold to be heretical in presence of all the Inquisitors of the Faith, for there are more men than women that can keep a secret, and I know right well that some might be found who would rather forego their happiness than have any human being know of it. For this reason has the Church, like a wise mother, ordained men to be confessors and not women, seeing that the latter can conceal nothing.”
“That is not the reason,” said Oisille; “it is because women are such enemies of vice that they would not grant absolution with the same readiness as is shown by men, and would be too stern in their penances.”
“If they were as stern in their penances,” said Dagoucin, “as they are in their responses, they would reduce far more sinners to despair than they would draw to salvation; and so the Church has in every sort well ordained. But, for all that, I will not excuse the gentlemen who thus boasted of their prison, for never was a man honoured by speaking evil of a woman.”
“Since they all fared alike,” said Hircan, “it seems to me that they did well to console one another.”
“Nay,” said Geburon, “they should never have acknowledged it for the sake of their own honour. The books of the Round Table (7) teach us that it is not to the honour of a worthy knight to overcome one that is good for naught.”
7 Queen Margaret was well acquainted with these (see
ante, vol. iii. p. 48). In a list drawn up after her
father’s death, of the two hundred volumes of books in his
library, a most remarkable one for the times, we find
specified several copies of “Lancelot,” “Tristan,” &c, some
in MS. with miniatures and illuminated letters, and others
printed on parchment. Besides numerous religious writings,
volumes of Aristotle, Ovid, Mandeville, Dante, the
Chronicles of St. Denis, and the “Book of the Great Khan,
bound in cloth of gold,” the library contained various works
of a character akin to that of the Heptameron. For
instance, a copy of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles in print;
a French translation of Poggio’s Facetio, also in print,
and two copies of Boccaccio in MS., one of them bound in
purple velvet, and richly illuminated, each page having a
border of blue and silver. This last if still in existence
would be very valuable.—Eu.
“I am amazed,” said Longarine, “that the unhappy woman did not die of shame in presence of her captives.”