“Then, ladies, you will needs be very hard-hearted,” said Saffredent, “if you take no pity on the Grey Friar whose story I am going to relate to you. You may perhaps think, from the tales that some among us have already told of the monks, that misadventures have befallen hapless damsels simply because ease of execution induced the attempt to be fearlessly begun, but, so that you may know that it is the blindness of wanton lust which deprives the friars of all fear and prudence, I will tell you of what happened to one of them in Flanders.”
[The Beating of the Wicked Grey Friar]
TALE XLI.
A Grey Friar to whom a maiden had presented herself on
Christmas night that he might confess her, laid upon her so
strange a penance that she would not submit to it, but rose
from before him without having received absolution; but her
mistress, hearing of the matter, caused the Grey Friar to be
flogged in her kitchen, and then sent him back, bound and
gagged, to his Warden.
In the year when my Lady Margaret of Austria came to Cambray on behalf of her nephew the Emperor, to treat of peace between him and the Most Christian King, who on his part was represented by his mother, my Lady Louise of Savoy, (1) the said Lady Margaret had in her train the Countess of Aiguemont, (2) who won, among this company, the renown of being the most beautiful of all the Flemish ladies.