“So fair are you and lovely, you well might wear the crown;
If all that is your birthright you now could call your own,
You would, in truth, be worthy to be with ladies seated.
Has he for whom you are toiling more such washers fair so foully treated?”
[1223]
To him the lovely maiden in greatest sorrow spoke:
“Many he hath beside us who fairer still do look.
All that you list now ask us; yet, with eye unsleeping,
One from the leads doth watch us, who ne’er will forgive the talk with you we’re keeping.”
[1224]