[The Clerk entreating Forgiveness of the President]
TALE XXXVI.
By means of a salad a President of Grenoble avenged himself
upon one of his clerks with whom his wife was smitten, and
so saved the honour of his house.
In the town of Grenoble there dwelt a President whose name I shall not mention, but he was not a Frenchman. (1) He had a very beautiful wife, and they lived in great tranquillity together.
1 The personage referred to is Jeffroy Charles or Carles,
Chief President of the Parliament of Grenoble, and President
of the Senate of Turin; his wife’s name was Margaret du
Mottet; she came of a very old family of Embrun. Some
interesting particulars concerning President Charles,
supplied by that erudite scholar M. Jules Roman, will be
found in the Appendix to the present volume (A).—Ed.
This lady, finding that her husband was now old, fell in love with a young clerk, called Nicholas. When the President went to the court in the morning, Nicholas used to enter his room and take his place. This was observed by a servant of the President’s who had served his master well for thirty years, and in his faithfulness he could not refrain from speaking to him of the matter.
The President, being a prudent man, would not lightly believe the story, but said that the servant wished to create contention between himself and his wife. If the matter, said he, were really as the servant declared, he could easily prove it to him, and if proof were not given he would believe that it was a lie contrived in order to destroy the love existing between himself and his wife. The servant promised that he would show him the truth of what he had said, and one morning, as soon as the President was gone to the court and Nicholas had entered the room, he sent one of his fellow-servants to tell his master to come, while he himself remained watching at the door lest Nicholas should come out.