COIFFURE OF A WOMAN
Lastly, there is the iniquity of false hair—as if the good God did not know the proper amount of herbage to grow from each female head! Once there was a holy man who could heal the sick. A young noblewoman suffered from grievous headaches. The miracle worker took one glance at her towering headpiece. "First," said he, "remove that scaffolding which surmounts your head. Then will I pray for you with great confidence." The sacrifice was too great, and she refused; yet erelong her anguish became unendurable and the holy man was recalled. He compelled her to cast away all her false hair and colored bands and swear never to resume them. Immediately then he began to pray—and, behold! her headache departed.
These sermons and Adela's sisterly warnings produce as much result as such admonitions can. Alienor will go through life, now dreading for her comeliness and now for her soul, but never quite imperiling either. Yet she is surely less frivolous than the family rivals, the Foretvert dames—who (tasteless creatures!) could adorn a whole cathedral of saints' images with their paint pots.
There are sometimes seen around St. Aliquis certain obnoxious people who are compelled to wear conspicuous garments in order that others may be warned and thus avoid physical or moral contamination. If you meet a man with a gray coat and a scarlet hat, pass at a distance—he is a leper. If he has a big circle of saffron cloth sewed on his breast, look to your money—he is a Jew. If he has a cross sewed on each side of his breast, say a prayer—he is a released heretic. Finally, if you go to Pontdebois and come upon sundry unveiled females in scarlet dresses, accost them not if you are a decent man—they are women of the town.
At last we have seen the general nature of the garments which are to make gay Alienor's wedding. It is time for the wedding itself.
Marriage, in noble families often does not mean the union of two souls, but of two fiefs. The average baron marries to extend his seigneury and to rear up sons to defend it. A wife represents an estate and a castle. Not many young men marry before they have been knighted. After that they are glad to enter into holy wedlock, for the normal way an aspiring young cavalier whose father is living can gain independence is through his wife's dowry, unless his father allows him a share of the barony.
Ages for Marriage
Since young men are not often knighted until late in their teens or even beyond twenty, weddings on their side seldom take place early. Girls, however, become marriageable sooner. South Country troubadours assert that love can begin to claim a girl when she is thirteen; she is then eligible for marriage. If she has not "given her heart" by the time she is twenty-one there is no hope for her, save in a nunnery; and old maids find no recognized place in society whether in castle, city, or peasant hut.[26]
