The Heptameron of Margaret_ Queen of Navarre King of Navarre consort of Henry II Queen Marguerite 2094 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Heptameron of Margaret,
Queen of Navarre
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Heptameron of Margaret, Queen of Navarre

Author: King of Navarre consort of Henry II Queen Marguerite

Contributor: Le Roux de Lincy

Editor: David Widger

Illustrator: Balthasar Anton Dunker
Sigmund Freudenberger

Translator: George Saintsbury

Release date: May 17, 2009 [eBook #28858]
Most recently updated: January 29, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28858

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
HEPTAMERON OF MARGARET, QUEEN OF NAVARRE ***

THE TALES OF
THE HEPTAMERON

OF

Margaret, Queen of Navarre

Newly Translated into English from the Authentic Text

OF M. LE ROUX DE LINCY WITH

AN ESSAY UPON THE HEPTAMERON
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.

Also the Original Seventy-three Full Page Engravings
Designed by S. FREUDENBERG

And One Hundred and Fifty Head and Tail Pieces
By DUNKER

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE FIRST
LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH
BIBLIOPHILISTS
MDCCCXCIV

Volume II. Volume III. Volume IV. Volume V.

[Margaret, Queen of Navarre, from a crayon drawing by Clouet,
preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

CONTENTS

PREFACE.
Explanation of the Initials appended to the Notes.

MARGARET OF ANGOULÊME, QUEEN OF
NAVARRE.
I.
II.

III.
IV.
ON THE HEPTAMERON
DEDICATIONS AND PREFACE,
Peter Boaistuau, surnamed Launay, To the
Reader

THE HEPTAMERON
PROLOGUE.
FIRST DAY.
TALE I.
TALE II.
TALE III.

TALE IV.
TALE V.
TALE VI.
TALE VII.

APPENDIX.
A. (Prologue, Page 31.)
B. (Tale I., Page 50.)
C. (Tale IV., Page 85.)

List of Illustrations
Frontispiece
Titlepage
013a.jpg
039a.jpg Du Mesnil Learns his Mistress’s
Infidelity from Her Maid
039.jpg Page Image
056.jpg Tailpiece
057a.jpg the Muleteer’s Servant Attacking his
Mistress
057.jpg Page Image
064.jpg Tailpiece
065a.jpg the Stags Head
065.jpg Page Image
078.jpg Tailpiece
079a.jpg Hurrying to Her Mistress’s Assistance
079.jpg Page Image
094.jpg Tailpiece
095a.jpg the Boatwoman of Coulon Outwitting
The Friars
095.jpg Page Image
102.jpg Tailpiece

103a.jpg the Wife’s Ruse to Secure The Escape of
Her Lover
103.jpg Page Image
108.jpg Tailpiece
109.jpg the Merchant Transferring his Caresses
from The Daughter to the Mother
110.jpg Page Image
113.jpg Tailpiece

TALE CONTENTS
FIRST DAY.

Tale I. The pitiful history of a Proctor of Alençon, named St. Aignan,
and of his wife, who caused her husband to assassinate her lover, the
son of the Lieutenant-General

Tale II. The fate of the wife of a muleteer of Amboise, who suffered herself
to be killed by her servant rather than sacrifice her chastity

Tale III. The revenge taken by the Queen of Naples, wife to King Alfonso,
for
her husband’s infidelity with a gentleman’s wife

Tale IV. The ill success of a Flemish gentleman who was unable to obtain,
either by persuasion or force, the love of a great Princess

Tale V. How a boatwoman of Coulon, near Nyort, contrived to escape from
the
vicious designs of two Grey Friars

Tale VI. How the wife of an old valet of the Duke of Alençon’s succeeded
in saving her lover from her husband, who was blind of one eye

Tale VII. The craft of a Parisian merchant, who saved the reputation of the
daughter by offering violence to the mother

PREFACE.
The first printed version of the famous Tales of Margaret of Navarre,
issued in Paris in the year 1558, under the title of “Histoires des Amans
Fortunez,” was extremely faulty and imperfect. It comprised but sixty-seven
of the seventy-two tales written by the royal author, and the editor, Pierre
Boaistuau, not merely changed the order of those narratives which he did
print, but suppressed numerous passages in them, besides modifying much
of Margaret’s phraseology. A somewhat similar course was adopted by
Claude Gruget, who, a year later, produced what claimed to be a complete
version of the stories, to which he gave the general title of the Heptameron,
a name they have ever since retained. Although he reinstated the majority of
the tales in their proper sequence, he still suppressed several of them, and
inserted others in their place, and also modified the Queen’s language after
the fashion set by Boaistuau. Despite its imperfections, however, Gruget’s
version was frequently reprinted down to the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when it served as the basis of the numerous editions of the
Heptameron in beau langage, as the French phrased it, which then began to
make their appearance. It served, moreover, in the one or the other form, for
the English and other translations of the work, and down to our own times
was accepted as the standard version of the Queen of Navarre’s celebrated
tales. Although it was known that various contemporary MSS. were
preserved at the French National Library in Paris, no attempt was made to
compare Gruget’s faulty version with the originals until the Société des
Bibliophiles Français entrusted this delicate task to M. Le Roux de Lincy,
whose labours led to some most valuable discoveries, enabling him to
produce a really authentic version of Margaret’s admired masterpiece, with
the suppressed tales restored, the omitted passages reinstated, and the
Queen’s real language given for the first time in all its simple gracefulness.
It is from the authentic text furnished by M. Le Roux de Lincy that the
present translation has been made, without the slightest suppression or
abridgment. The work moreover contains all the more valuable notes to be
found in the best French editions of the Heptameron, as well as numerous
others from original sources, and includes a résumé of the various

suggestions made by MM. Félix Frank, Le Roux de Lincy, Paul Lacroix,
and A. de Montaiglon, towards the identification of the narrators of the
stories, and the principal actors in them, with well-known personages of the
time. An Essay on the Heptameron from the pen of Mr. George Saintsbury,
M.A., and a Life of Queen Margaret, are also given, as well as the quaint
Prefaces of the earlier French versions; and a complete bibliographical
summary of the various editions which have issued from the press.
It may be supposed that numerous illustrated editions have been
published of a work so celebrated as the Heptameron, which, besides
furnishing scholars with a favourite subject for research and speculation,
has, owing to its perennial freshness, delighted so many generations of
readers. Such, however, is not the case. Only two fully illustrated editions
claim the attention of connoisseurs. The first of these was published at
Amsterdam in 1698, with designs by the Dutch artist, Roman de Hooge,
whose talent has been much overrated. To-day this edition is only valuable
on account of its comparative rarity. Very different was the famous edition
illustrated by Freudenberg, a Swiss artist—the friend of Boucher and of
Greuze—which was published in parts at Berne in 1778-81, and which
among amateurs has long commanded an almost prohibitive price.
The Full-page Illustrations to the present translation are printed from
the actual copperplates engraved for the Berne edition by Lon-geuil,
Halbou, and other eminent French artists of the eighteenth century, after the
designs of S. Freudenberg. There are also the one hundred and fifty
elaborate head and tail pieces executed for the Berne edition by Dunker,
well known to connoisseurs as one of the principal engravers of the Cabinet
of the Duke de Choiseul.
The Portrait of Queen Margaret placed as frontispiece to the present
volume is from a crayon drawing by Clouet, preserved at the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris.
Ernest A. Vizetelly.
London,
1893.

Explanation of the Initials appended to the Notes.

B.J...Bibliophile Jacob, i.e. Paul Lacroix.
D.....F. Dillaye.
F.....Félix Frank.
L.....Le Roux de Lincy.
M.....Anatole de Montaiglon.
Ed....E. A. Vizetelly.

MARGARET OF ANGOULÊME, QUEEN OF
NAVARRE.

I.

Louise of Savoy; her marriage with the Count of Angouleme—
Birth of her children Margaret and Francis—Their father’s
early death—Louise and her children at Amboise—Margaret’s
studies and her brother’s pastimes—Marriage of Margaret
with the Duke of Alençon—Her estrangement from her husband—
Accession of Francis I.—The Duke of Alençon at Marignano—
Margaret’s Court at Alençon—Her personal appearance—Her
interest in the Reformation and her connection with Clement
Marot—Lawsuit between Louise of Savoy and the Constable de
Bourbon.

In dealing with the life and work of Margaret of Angouleme (1) it is
necessary at the outset to refer to the mother whose influence and
companionship served so greatly to mould her daughter’s career.

1 This Life of Margaret is based upon the memoir by M, Le
Roux de Lincy prefixed to the edition of the Heptameron
issued by the Société des Bibliophiles Français, but various
errors have been rectified, and advantage has been taken of
the researches of later biographers.

Louise of Savoy, daughter of Count Philip of Bresse, subsequently
Duke of Savoy, was born at Le Pont d’Ain in 1477, and upon the death of
her mother, Margaret de Bourbon, she married Charles d’Orléans, Count of
Angoulême, to whom she brought the slender dowry of thirty-five thousand
livres. (1) She was then but twelve years old, her husband being some
twenty years her senior. He had been banished from the French Court for
his participation in the insurrection of Brittany, and was living in straitened
circumstances. Still, on either side the alliance was an honourable one.
Louise belonged to a sovereign house, while the Count of Angoulême was a
prince of the blood royal of France by virtue of his descent from King
Charles V., his grandfather having been that monarch’s second son, the
notorious Duke Louis of Orleans, (2) who was murdered in Paris in 1417 at
the instigation of John the Bold of Burgundy.

1 The value of the Paris livre at this date was twenty

sols, so that the amount would be equivalent to about L1400.

2 This was the prince described by Brantôme as a “great
débaucher of the ladies of the Court, and invariably of the
greatest among them.”—Vies des Dames galantes (Disc. i.).

Louise, who, although barely nubile, impatiently longed to become a
mother, gave birth to her first child after four years of wedded life. “My
daughter Margaret,” she writes in the journal recording the principal events
of her career, “was born in the year 1492, the eleventh day of April, at two
o’clock in the morning; that is to say, the tenth day, fourteen hours and ten
minutes, counting after the manner of the astronomers.” This auspicious
event took place at the Château of Angoulême, then a formidable and
stately pile, of which nowadays there only remains a couple of towers, built
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Soon afterwards Cognac became
the Count of Angoulême’s favourite place of residence, and it was there that
Louise gave birth, on September 12th, 1494, to her second child, a son, who
was christened Francis.
Louise’s desires were now satisfied, but her happiness did not long
remain complete. On January 1st, 1496, when she was but eighteen years
old, she lost her amiable and accomplished husband, and forthwith retiring
to her Château of Romorantin, she resolved to devote herself entirely to the
education of her children. The Duke of Orleans, who, on the death of
Charles VIII. in 1498, succeeded to the throne as Louis XII., was appointed
their guardian, and in 1499 he invited them and their mother to the royal
Château of Amboise, where they remained for several years.
The education of Francis, who had become heir-presumptive to the
throne, was conducted at Amboise by the Marshal de Gié, one of the King’s
favourites, whilst Margaret was intrusted to the care of a venerable lady,
whom her panegyrist does not mention by name, but in whom he states all
virtues were assembled. (1) This lady took care to regulate not only the acts
but also the language of the young princess, who was provided with a tutor
in the person of Robert Hurault, Baron of Auzay, great archdeacon and
abbot of St. Martin of Autun. (2) This divine instructed her in Latin and
French literature, and also taught her Spanish and Italian, in which
languages Brantôme asserts that she became proficient. “But albeit she
knew how to speak good Spanish and good Italian,” he says, “she always
made use of her mother tongue for matters of moment; though when it was

necessary to join in jesting and gallant conversation she showed that she
was acquainted with more than her daily bread.” (3)

1 Sainte-Marthe’s Oraison funèbre de la Royne de Navarre,
p. 22. Margaret’s modern biographers state that this lady was
Madame de Chastillon, but it is doubtful which Madame
de Chastillon it was. The Rev. James Anderson assumes it was
Louise de Montmorency, the mother of the Colignys, whilst
Miss Freer asserts it was Anne de Chabannes de Damniartin,
wife of James de Chastillon, killed in Italy in 1572. M.
Franck has shown, in his edition of the Heptameron, that
Anne de Chabannes died about 1505, and that James de
Chastillon then married Blanche de Tournon. Possibly his
first wife may have been Margaret’s governess, but what is
quite certain is that the second wife became her lady of
honour, and that it is she who is alluded to in the
Heptameron.

2 Odolant Desnos’s Mémoires historiques sur Alençon,
vol. ii.

3 Brantôme’s Rodomontades espagnoles, 18mo, 1740, vol.
xii. p. 117.

Such was Margaret’s craving for knowledge that she even wished to
obtain instruction in Hebrew, and Paul Paradis, surnamed Le Canosse, a
professor at the Royal College, gave her some lessons in it. Moreover, a
rather obscure passage in the funeral oration which Sainte-Marthe devoted
to her after her death, seemingly implies that she acquired from some of the
most eminent men then flourishing the precepts of the philosophy of the
ancients.
The journal kept by Louise of Savoy does not impart much
information as to the style of life which she and her children led in their
new abode, the palatial Château of Amboise, originally built by the Counts
of Anjou, and fortified by Charles VII. with the most formidable towers in
France. (1)

1 The Château of Amboise, now the private property of the
Count de Paris, is said to occupy the site of a Roman
fortress destroyed by the Normans and rebuilt by Foulques
the Red of Anjou. When Francis I. ascended the French throne
he presented the barony of Amboise with its hundred and
forty-six fiefs to his mother, Louise of Savoy.

Numerous authorities state, however, that Margaret spent most of her
time in study with her preceptors and in the devotional exercises which then
had so large a place in the training of princesses. Still she was by no means
indifferent to the pastimes in which her brother and his companions
engaged. Gaston de Foix, the nephew of the King, William Gouffier, who
became Admiral de Bonnivet, Philip Brion, Sieur de Chabot, Fleurange,
“the young adventurer,” Charles de Bourbon, Count of Montpensier, and
Anne de Montmorency—two future Constables of France—surrounded the
heir to the throne, with whom they practised tennis, archery, and jousting,
or played at soldiers pending the time when they were to wage war in
earnest. (1)
Margaret was a frequent spectator of these pastimes, and took a keen
interest in her brother’s efforts whenever he was assailing or defending
some miniature fortress or tilting at the ring. It would appear also that she
was wont to play at chess with him; for we have it on high authority that it
is she and her brother who are represented, thus engaged, in a curious
miniature preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. (2) In this
design—executed by an unknown artist—only the back of Francis is to be
seen, but a full view of Margaret is supplied; the personage standing behind
her being Artus Gouffier, her own and her brother’s governor.

1 Fleurange’s Histoire des Choses mémorables advenues du
Reigne de Louis XII. et François I.

2 Paulin Paris’s Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du
Roi, &c., Paris, 1836, vol. i. pp. 279-281. The miniature
in question is contained in MS. No. 6808: Commentaire sur
le Livre des Échecs amoureux et Archiloge Sophie.

Whatever time Margaret may have devoted to diversion, she was
certainly a very studious child, for at fifteen years of age she already had
the reputation of being highly accomplished. Shortly after her sixteenth
birthday a great change took place in her life. On August 3rd, 1508, Louise
of Savoy records in her journal that Francis “this day quitted Amboise to
become a courtier, and left me all alone.” Margaret accompanied her
brother upon his entry into the world, the young couple repairing to Blois,
where Louis XII. had fixed his residence. There had previously been some
unsuccessful negotiations in view of marrying Margaret to Prince Henry of
England (Henry VIII.), and at this period another husband was suggested in

the person of Charles of Austria, Count of Flanders, and subsequently
Emperor Charles V. Louis XII., however, had other views as regards the
daughter of the Count of Angoulême, for he knew that if he himself died
without male issue the throne would pass to Margaret’s brother. Hence he
decided to marry her to a prince of the royal house, Charles, Duke of
Alençon.
This prince, born at Alençon on September 2nd, 1489, had been
brought up at the Château of Mauves, in Le Perche, by his mother, the pious
and charitable Margaret of Lorraine, who on losing her husband had
resolved, like Louise of Savoy, to devote herself to the education of her
children. (1)

1 Hilarion de Coste’s Vies et Éloges des Dames illustres,
vol. ii. p. 260.

It had originally been intended that her son Charles should marry
Susan, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon—the celebrated Peter
and Anne de Beaujeu—but this match fell through owing to the death of
Peter and the opposition of Anne, who preferred the young Count of
Montpensier (afterwards Constable de Bourbon) as a son-in-law. A yet
higher alliance then presented itself for Charles: it was proposed that he
should marry Anne of Brittany, the widow of King Charles VIII., but she
was many years his senior, and, moreover, to prevent the separation of
Brittany from France, it had been stipulated that she should marry either her
first husband’s successor (Louis XII.) or the heir-presumptive to the throne.
Either course seemed impracticable, as the heir, Francis of Angoulême, was
but a child, while the new King was already married to Jane, a daughter of
Louis XI. Brittany seemed lost to France, when Louis XII., by promising
the duchy of Valentinois to Cæsar Borgia, prevailed upon Pope Alexander
VI. to divorce him from his wife. He then married Anne of Brittany, while
Charles of Alençon proceeded to perfect his knightly education, pending
other matrimonial arrangements.
In 1507, when in his eighteenth year, he accompanied the army which
the King led against the Genoese, and conducted himself bravely;
displaying such courage, indeed, at the battle of Agnadel, gained over the
Venetians—who were assailed after the submission of Genoa—that Louis
XII. bestowed upon him the Order of St. Michael. It was during this Italian

expedition that his mother negotiated his marriage with Margaret of
Angoulême. The alliance was openly countenanced by Louis XII., and the
young Duke of Valois—as Francis of Angoulême was now called—readily
acceded to it. Margaret brought with her a dowry of sixty thousand livres,
payable in four instalments, and Charles, who was on the point of attaining
his twenty-first year, was declared a major and placed in possession of his
estates. (1) The marriage was solemnised at Blois in October 1509.

1 Odolant Desnos’s Mémoires historiques sur Alençon,
vol. ii. p. 231

Margaret did not find in her husband a mind comparable to her own.
Differences of taste and temper brought about a certain amount of coolness,
which did not, however, hinder the Duchess from fulfilling the duties of a
faithful, submissive wife. In fact, although but little sympathy would appear
to have existed between the Duke and Duchess of Alençon, their domestic
differences have at least been singularly exaggerated.
During the first five years of her married life Margaret lived in
somewhat retired style in her duchy of Alençon, while her husband took
part in various expeditions, and was invested with important functions. In
1513 he fought in Picardy against the English and Imperialists, commanded
by Henry VIII., being present at the famous “Battle of Spurs;” and early in
1514 he was appointed Lieutenant-General and Governor of Brittany.
Margaret at this period was not only often separated from her husband, but
she also saw little of her mother, who had retired to her duchy of
Angoulême. Louise of Savoy, as mother of the heir-presumptive, was the
object of the homage of all adroit and politic courtiers, but she had to
behave with circumspection on account of the jealousy of the Queen, Anne
of Brittany, whose daughters, Claude and Renée, were debarred by the Salic
Law from inheriting the crown. Louis XII. wished to marry Claude to
Francis of Angoulême, but Anne refusing her consent, it was only after her
death, in 1514, that the marriage was solemnised.
It now seemed certain that Francis would in due course ascend the
throne; but Louis XII. abruptly contracted a third alliance, marrying Mary
of England, the sister of Henry VIII. Louise of Savoy soon deemed it
prudent to keep a watch on the conduct of this gay young Queen, and took
up her residence at the Court in November 1514. Shortly afterwards Louis

XII. died of exhaustion, as many had foreseen, and the hopes of the
Duchess of Angoulême were realised. She knew the full extent of her
empire over her son, now Francis I., and felt both able and ready to exercise
a like authority over the affairs of his kingdom.
The accession of Francis gave a more important position to Margaret
and her husband. The latter was already one of the leading personages of
the state, and new favours increased his power. He did not address the King
as “Your Majesty,” says Odolant Desnos, but styled him “Monseigneur” or
“My Lord,” and all the acts which he issued respecting his duchy of
Alençon began with the preamble, “Charles, by the grace of God.” Francis
had scarcely become King than he turned his eyes upon Italy, and
appointing his mother as Regent, he set out with a large army, a portion of
which was commanded by the Duke of Alençon. At the battle of Marignano
the troops of the latter formed the rearguard, and, on perceiving that the
Swiss were preparing to surround the bulk of the French army, Charles
marched against them, overthrew them, and by his skilful manouvres
decided the issue of the second day’s fight. (1) The conquest of the duchy of
Milan was the result of this victory, and peace supervening, the Duke of
Alençon returned to France.

1 Odolant Desnos’s Mémoires historiques sur Alençon, vol.
ii. p. 238.

It was at this period that Margaret began to keep a Court, which,
according to Odolant Desnos, rivalled that of her brother. We know that in
1517 she and her husband entertained the King with a series of magnificent
fêtes at their Château of Alençon, which then combined both a palace and a
fortress. But little of the château now remains, as, after the damage done to
it during the religious wars between 1561 and 1572, it was partially
demolished by Henry IV. when he and Biron captured it in 1590. Still the
lofty keep built by Henry I. of England subsisted intact till in 1715 it was
damaged by fire, and finally in 1787 razed to the ground.
The old pile was yet in all its splendour in 1517, when Francis I. was
entertained there with jousts and tournaments. At these gay gatherings
Margaret appeared apparelled in keeping with her brother’s love of display;
for, like all princesses, she clothed herself on important occasions in
sumptuous garments. But in every-day life she was very simple, despising

the vulgar plan of impressing the crowd by magnificence and splendour. In
a portrait executed about this period, her dark-coloured dress is surmounted
by a wimple with a double collar and her head covered with a cap in the
Bearnese style. This portrait (1) tends, like those of a later date, to the belief
that Margaret’s beauty, so celebrated by the poets of her time, consisted
mainly in the nobility of her bearing and the sweetness and liveliness spread
over her features. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were very large, but although
she had been violently attacked with small-pox while still young, she had
been spared the traces which this cruel illness so often left in those days,
and she even preserved the freshness of her complexion until late in life. (2)

1 It is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,
where it will be found in the Recueil de Portraits au
crayon par Clouett Dumonstier, &c, fol. xi.

2 Referring to this subject, she says in one of her letters:
“You can tell it to the Count and Countess of Vertus, whom
you will go and visit on my behalf; and say to the Countess
that I am sorely vexed that she has this loathsome illness.
However, I had it as severely as ever was known. And if it
be that she has caught it as I have been told, I should like
to be near her to preserve her complexion, and do for her
what Ï did for myself.”—Génin’s lettres de Marguerite
d’Angoulême, Paris, 1841, p. 374.

Like her brother, whom she greatly resembled, she was very tall. Her
gait was solemn, but the dignified air of her person was tempered by
extreme affability and a lively humour, which never left her. (1)

1 Sainte-Marthe says on this subject: “For in her face, in
her gestures, in her walk, in her words, in all that she did
and said, a royal gravity made itself so manifest and
apparent, that one saw I know not what of majesty which
compelled every one to revere and dread her. In seeing her
kindly receive every one, refuse no one, and patiently
listen to all, you would have promised yourself easy and
facile access to her; but if she cast eyes upon you, there
was in her face I know not what of gravity, which made you
so astounded that you no longer had power, I do not say to
walk a step, but even to stir a foot to approach her.”—
Oraison-funèbre, &c, p. 53.

Francis I. did not allow the magnificent reception accorded to him at
Alençon to pass unrewarded. He presented his sister with the duchy of

Berry, where she henceforward exercised temporal control, though she does
not appear to have ever resided there for any length of time. In 1521, when
her husband started to the relief of Chevalier Bayard, attacked in Mézières
by the Imperial troops, she repaired to Meaux with her mother so as to be
near to the Duke. Whilst sojourning there she improved her acquaintance
with the Bishop, William Briçonnet, who had gathered around him Gerard
Roussel, Michael d’Arande, Lefèvre d’Etaples, and other celebrated
disciples of the Reformation. The effect of Luther’s preaching had scarcely
reached France before Margaret had begun to manifest great interest in the
movement, and had engaged in a long correspondence with Briçonnet,
which is still extant. Historians are at variance as to whether Margaret ever
really contemplated a change of religion, or whether the protection she
extended to the Reformers was simply dictated by a natural feeling of
compassion and a horror of persecution. It has been contended that she
really meditated a change of faith, and even attempted to convert her
mother and brother; and this view is borne out by some passages in the
letters which she wrote to Bishop Briçonnet after spending the winter of
1521 at Meaux.
Whilst she was sojourning there, her husband, having contributed to
the relief of Mézières, joined the King, who was then encamped at
Fervacques on the Somme, and preparing to invade Hainault. It was at this
juncture that Clement Marot, the poet, who, after being attached to the
person of Anne of Brittany, had become a hanger-on at the Court of Francis
I., applied to Margaret to take him into her service. (1)

1 Epistle ii.: Le Despourveu à Madame la Duchesse
d’Alençon, in the OEuvres de Clément Marot, 1700, vol. i.
p. 99.

Shortly afterwards we find him furnishing her with information
respecting the royal army, which had entered Hainault and was fighting
there. (1)

1 Epistle iii.: Du Camp d’ Attigny à ma dite Dame d’
Alençon, ibid., vol. i. p. 104.

Lenglet-Dufresnoy, in his edition of Marot’s works, originated the
theory that the numerous poems composed by Marot in honour of Margaret

supply proofs of an amorous intrigue between the pair. Other authorities
have endorsed this view; but M. Le Roux de Lincy asserts that in the pieces
referred to, and others in which Marot incidentally speaks of Margaret, he
can find no trace either of the fancy ascribed to her for the poet or of the
passion which the latter may have felt for her. Like all those who
surrounded the Duchess of Alençon, Marot, he remarks, exalted her beauty,
art, and talent to the clouds; but whenever it is to her that his verses are
directly addressed, he does not depart from the respect he owes to her. To
give some likelihood to his conjectures, Lenglet-Dufresnoy had to suppose
that Marot addressed Margaret in certain verses which were not intended
for her. In the epistles previously mentioned, and in several short pieces,
rondeaux, epigrams, new years’ addresses, and epitaphs really written to or
for the sister of Francis I., one only finds respectful praise, such as the
humble courtier may fittingly offer to his patroness. There is nothing
whatever, adds M. Le Roux de Lincy, to promote the suspicion that a
passion, either unfortunate or favoured, inspired a single one of these
compositions.
The campaign in which Francis I. was engaged at the time when
Marot’s connection with Margaret began, and concerning which the poet
supplied her with information, was destined to influence the whole reign,
since it furnished the occasion of the first open quarrel between Francis I.
and the companion of his childhood, Charles de Bourbon, Count of
Montpensier, and Constable of France. Yielding too readily on this occasion
to the persuasions of his mother, Francis intrusted to Margaret’s husband
the command of the vanguard, a post which the Constable considered his
own by virtue of his office. He felt mortally offended at the preference
given to the Duke of Alençon, and from that day forward he and Francis
were enemies for ever.
Whilst the King was secretly jealous of Bourbon, who was one of the
handsomest, richest, and bravest men in the kingdom, Louise of Savoy,
although forty-four years of age, was in love with him. The Constable, then
thirty-two, had lost his wife, Susan de Bourbon, from whom he had
inherited vast possessions. To these Louise of Savoy, finding her passion
disregarded, laid claim, as being a nearer relative of the deceased. A
marriage, as Chancellor Duprat suggested, would have served to reconcile
the parties, but the Constable having rejected the proposed alliance—with
disdain, so it is said—the suit was brought before the Parliament and

decided in favour of Louise. Such satisfaction as she may have felt was not,
however, of long duration, for Charles de Bourbon left France, entered the
service of Charles V., and in the following year (1524) helped to drive the
French under Bonnivet out of Italy.

II.

The Regency of Louise of Savoy—Margaret and the royal
children—The defeat of Pavia and the death of the Duke of
Alençon—The Royal Trinity—“All is lost save honour”—
Margaret’s journey to Spain and her negotiations with
Charles V.—Her departure from Madrid—The scheme to arrest
her, and her flight on horseback—Liberation of Francis I.—
Clever escape of Henry of Navarre from prison—Margaret’s
secret fancy for him—Her personal appearance at this
period—Marriage of Henry and Margaret at St. Germain.

The most memorable events of Margaret’s public life date from this
period. Francis, who was determined to reconquer the Milanese, at once
made preparations for a new campaign. Louise of Savoy was again
appointed Regent of the kingdom, and as Francis’s wife, Claude, was dying
of consumption, the royal children were confided to the care of Margaret,
whose husband accompanied the army. Louise of Savoy at first repaired to
Lyons with her children, in order to be nearer to Italy, but she and Margaret
soon returned to Blois, where the Queen was dying. Before the royal army
had reached Milan Claude expired, and soon afterwards Louise was
incapacitated by a violent attack of gout, while the children of Francis also
fell ill. The little ones, of whom Margaret had charge, consisted of three
boys and three girls, the former being Francis, the Dauphin, who died in
1536, Charles, Duke of Orleans, who died in 1545, and Henry, Count of
Angoulême, who succeeded his father on the throne. The girls comprised
Madeleine, afterwards the wife of James V. of Scotland, Margaret,
subsequently Duchess of Savoy, and the Princess Charlotte. The latter was
particularly beloved by her aunt Margaret, who subsequently dedicated to
her memory her poem Le Miroir de l’Ame Pécheresse. While the other
children recovered from their illness, little Charlotte, as Margaret records in
her letters to Bishop Briçonnet, was seized “with so grievous a malady of
fever and flux,” that after a month’s suffering she expired, to the deep grief
of her aunt, who throughout her illness had scarcely left her side.
This affliction was but the beginning of Margaret’s troubles. Soon
afterwards the Constable de Bourbon, in conjunction with Pescara and

Lannoy, avenged his grievances under the walls of Pavia. On this occasion,
as at Marignano, the Duke of Alençon commanded the French reserves, and
had charge of the fortified camp from which Francis, listening to Bonnivet,
sallied forth, despite the advice of his best officers. The King bore himself
bravely, but he was badly wounded and forced to surrender, after La Palisse,
Lescun, Bonnivet, La Trémoïlle, and Bussy d’Amboise had been slain
before his eyes. Charles of Alençon was then unable to resist the advice
given him to retreat, and thus save the few Frenchmen who had escaped the
arms of the Imperialists. With four hundred lances he abandoned the camp,
crossed the Ticino, and reaching France by way of Piedmont, proceeded to
Lyons, where he found Louise of Savoy and Margaret.
It has been alleged that they received him with harsh reproaches, and
that, unable to bear the shame he felt for his conduct, he died only a few
days after the battle. (1)

1 See Garnier’s Histoire de France, vol. xxiv.; Gaillard’s
Histoire de France, &c. Odolant Desnos, usually well
informed, falls into the same error, and asserts that when
the Duke, upon his arrival, asked Margaret to kiss him, she
replied, “Fly, coward! you have feared death. You might find
it in my arms, as I do not answer for myself.”—Mémoires
historiques, vol. ii. p. 253.

There are several errors in these assertions, which a contemporary
document enables us to rectify. The battle of Pavia was fought on February
14th, 1525, and Charles of Alençon did not die till April 11th, more than a
month after his arrival at Lyons. He was carried off in five days by pleurisy,
and some hours before his death was still able to rise and partake of the
communion. Margaret bestowed the most tender care upon him, and the
Regent herself came to visit him, the Duke finding strength enough to say
to her, “Madam, I beg of you to let the King know that since the day he was
made a prisoner I have been expecting nothing but death, since I was not
sufficiently favoured by Heaven to share his lot or to be slain in serving him
who is my king, father, brother, and good master.” After kissing the
Regent’s hand he added, “I commend to you her who has been my wife for
fifteen years, and who has been as good as she is virtuous towards me.”
Then, as Louise of Savoy wished to take Margaret away, Charles turned
towards the latter and said to her, “Do not leave me.”

The Duchess refused to follow her mother, and embracing her dying
husband, showed him the crucifix placed before his eyes. The Duke, having
summoned one of his gentlemen, M. de Chan-deniers, instructed him to bid
farewell on his part to all his servants, and to thank them for their services,
telling them that he had no longer strength to see them. He asked God aloud
to forgive his sins, received the extreme unction from the Bishop of Lisieux,
and raising his eyes to heaven, said “Jesus,” and expired. (1)
Whilst tending her dying husband, Margaret was also deeply
concerned as to the fate of her captive brother, for whom she always
evinced the warmest affection. Indeed, so close were the ties uniting Louise
of Savoy and her two children that they were habitually called the “Trinity,”
as Clement Marot and Margaret have recorded in their poems. (2)

1 From a MS. poem in the Bibliothèque Nationale entitled
Les Prisons, probably written by William Philander or
Filandrier, a canon of Rodez.

2 See OEuvres de Clément Marot, 1731, vol. v. p. 274; and
A. Champoîlion-Figeac’s Poésies de François Ier, &c.,
Paris, 1847, p. 80.

In this Trinity Francis occupied the highest place; his mother called
him “her Cæsar and triumphant hero,” while his sister absolutely
reverenced him, and was ever ready to do his bidding. Thus the intelligence
that he was wounded and a prisoner threw them into consternation, and they
were yet undecided how to act when they received that famous epistle in
which Francis wrote—not the legendary words, “All is lost save honour,”
but—“Of all things there have remained to me but honour and life, which is
safe.” After begging his mother and sister to face the extremity by
employing their customary prudence, the King commended his children to
their care, and expressed the hope that God would not abandon him. (1)
This missive revived the courage of the Regent and Margaret, for shortly
afterwards we find the latter writing to Francis: “Your letter has had such
effect upon the health of Madame [Louise], and of all those who love you,
that it has been to us as a Holy Ghost after the agony of the Passion....
Madame has felt so great a renewal of strength, that whilst day and evening
last not a moment is lost over your business, so that you need have no grief
or care about your kingdom and children.” (2)

1 See extract from the Registers of the Parliament of Paris
(Nov. 10, 1525) in Dulaure’s Histoire de Paris, Paris,
1837, vol. iii. p. 209; and Lalanne’s Journal d’un
Bourgeois de Paris, Paris, 1854, p. 234. The original of
the letter no longer exists, but the authenticity of the
text cannot be disputed, as all the more essential portions
are quoted in the collective reply of Margaret and Louise of
Savoy, which is still extant. See Champollion-Figeac’s
Captivité de François Ier, pp. 129, 130.

2 Génin’s Nouvelles Lettres de la Peine de Navarre,
Paris, 1842, p. 27.

Louise of Savoy was indeed now displaying courage and ability. News
shortly arrived that the King had been transferred to Madrid, and that
Charles demanded most onerous conditions for the release of his prisoner.
At this juncture Francis wrote to his mother that he was very ill, and begged
of her to come to him. Louise, however, felt that she ought not to accede to
this request, for it would be jeopardising the monarchy to place the Regent
as well as the King of France in the Emperor’s hands; accordingly she
resolved that Margaret should go instead of herself.
The Baron of St. Blancard, general of the King’s galleys, who had
previously offered to rescue Francis while the latter was on his way to
Spain, received orders to make the necessary preparations for Margaret’s
voyage, of which she defrayed the expense, as is shown by a letter she
wrote to John Brinon, Chancellor of Alençon. In this missive she states that
the Baron of St. Blancard has made numerous disbursements on account of
her journey which are to be refunded to him, “so that he may know that I
am not ungrateful for the good service he has done me, for he hath acquitted
himself thereof in such a way that I have occasion to be gratified.” (1)

1 Génin’s Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 193.—Génin’s
Notice, ibid., p. 19.

Despite adverse winds, Margaret embarked on August 27th, 1525, at
Aigues-Mortes, with the President de Selves, the Archbishop of Embrun,
the Bishop of Tarbes, and a fairly numerous suite of ladies. The Emperor
had granted her a safe-conduct for six months, and upon landing in Spain
she hurried to Madrid, where she found her brother very sick both in mind
and body. She eagerly caressed and tended him, and with a good result, as

she knew his nature and constitution much better than the doctors. To raise
his depressed spirits she had recourse to religious ceremonies, giving orders
for an altar to be erected in the room where he was lying. She then
requested the Archbishop of Embrun to celebrate mass, and received the
communion in company of all the French retainers about the prisoner. It is
stated that the King, who for some hours had given no sign of life, opened
his eyes at the moment of the consecration of the elements, and asked for
the communion, saying, “God will cure me, soul and body.” From this time
forward he began to recover his health, though he remained fretful on
account of his captivity.
It was a difficult task to obtain his release. The Court and the Emperor
were extremely polite, but Margaret soon recognised the emptiness of their
protestations of good-will. “They all tell me that they love the King,” she
wrote, “but I have little proof of it. If I had to do with honest folks, who
understand what honour is, I should not care, but it is the contrary.” (1)

1 Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 21.

She was not the woman to turn back at the first obstacle, however; she
began by endeavouring to gain over several high personages, and on
perceiving that the men avoided speaking with her on serious business, she
addressed herself to their mothers, wives, or daughters. In a letter to
Marshal de Montmorency, then with the King, she thus refers to the Duke
del Infantado, who had received her at his castle of Guadalaxara. “You will
tell the King that the Duke has been warned from the Court that if he wishes
to please the Emperor neither he nor his son is to speak to me; but the ladies
are not forbidden me, and to them I will speak twofold.” (1)
Throughout the negotiations for her brother’s release Margaret always
maintained the dignity and reserve fitting to her sex and situation. Writing
to Francis on this subject she says: “The Viceroy (Lannoy) has sent me
word that he is of opinion I should go and see the Emperor, but I have told
him through M. de Senlis that I have not yet stirred from my lodging
without being asked, and that whenever it pleases the Emperor to see me I
shall be found there.” (2)

1 Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 197.

2 Captivité de François Ier, p. 358.

Margaret was repeatedly admitted to the Imperial council to discuss
the conditions of her brother’s ransom. She showed as much ability as
loftiness of mind on these occasions, and several times won Charles V.
himself and the sternest of his Ministers to her opinion. (1)

1 Brantôme states that the Emperor was greatly impressed and
astonished by her plain speaking. She reproached him for
treating Francis so harshly, declaring that this course
would not enable him to attain his ends. “For although he
(the King) might die from the effects of this rigorous
treatment, his death would not remain unpunished, as he had
children who would some day become men and wreak signal
vengeance.” “These words,” adds Brantôme, “spoken so bravely
and in such hot anger, gave the Emperor occasion for
thought, insomuch that he moderated himself and visited the
King and made him many fine promises, which he did not keep,
however.” With the Ministers Margaret was even more
outspoken; but we are told that she turned her oratorical
powers “to such good purpose that she rendered herself
agreeable rather than odious or unpleasant; the more readily
as she was also good-looking, a widow, and in the flower of
her age.”—OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. v. (Les Dames
illustres).

She highly favoured the proposed marriage between Francis and his
rival’s sister, Eleanor of Austria, detecting in this alliance the most certain
means of a speedy release. Eleanor, born at Louvain in 1498, had in 1519
married Emanuel, King of Portugal, who died two years afterwards. Since
then she had been promised to the Constable de Bourbon, but the Emperor
did not hesitate to sacrifice the latter to his own interests.
He himself, being fascinated by Margaret’s grace and wit, thought of
marrying her, and had a letter sent to Louise of Savoy, plainly setting forth
the proposal. In this missive, referring to the Constable de Bourbon, Charles
remarked that “there were good matches in France in plenty for him; for
instance, Madame Renée, (1) with whom he might very well content
himself.” (2) These words have led to the belief that there had been some
question of a marriage between Margaret and the Constable; however, there
is no mention of any such alliance in the diplomatic documents exchanged
between France and Spain on the subject of the King’s release. These

documents comprise an undertaking to restore the Constable his estates, and
even to arrange a match for him in France, (3) but Margaret is never
mentioned. She herself, in the numerous letters handed down to us, does not
once refer to the famous exile, and the intrigue described by certain
historians and romancers evidently rests upon no solid foundation. (4)

1 Renée, the younger daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of
Brittany, subsequently celebrated as Renée of Ferrara.

2 This letter is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale,
Béthune MSS., No. 8496, fol. xiii.

3 Captivité de Francois Ier, &c., pp. 167-207.

4 Varillas is the principal historian who has mentioned
this supposed intrigue, which also furnished the subject of
a romance entitled Histoire de Marguerite, Reine de
Navarre, &c., 1696.

After three months of negotiations, continually broken off and
renewed, Margaret and her brother, feeling convinced of Charles V.‘s evil
intentions, resolved to take steps to ensure the independence of France. By
the King’s orders Robertet, his secretary, drew up letters-patent, dated
November 1525 by which it was decreed that the young Dauphin should be
crowned at once, and that the regency should continue in the hands of
Louise of Savoy, but that in the event of her death the same power should
be exercised by Francis’s “very dear and well-beloved only sister, Margaret
of France, Duchess of Alençon and Berry.” (1) However, all these
provisions were to be deemed null and void in the event of Francis
obtaining his release.
It has been erroneously alleged that Margaret on leaving Spain took
this deed of abdication with her, and that the Emperor, informed of the
circumstance, gave orders for her to be arrested as soon as her safe-conduct
should expire. (2) However, it was the Marshal de Montmorency who
carried the deed to France, and Charles V. in ordering the arrest of Margaret
had no other aim than that of securing an additional hostage in case his
treaty with Francis should not be fulfilled.

1 Captivité de François 1er, &c., p. 85.

2 Génin’s Notice in the Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p.
25.

Margaret, pressed by her brother, at last asked for authorisation to
leave Spain. By the manner in which the permission was granted she
perceived that the Emperor wished to delay rather than hasten her journey.
During November she wrote Francis a letter in which this conviction was
plainly expressed, and about the 19th of the month she left Madrid upon her
journey overland to France.
At first she travelled very leisurely, but eventually she received a
message from her brother, advising her to hasten her speed, as the Emperor,
hoping that she would still be in Spain in January, when her safe-conduct
would expire, had given orders for her arrest. Accordingly, on reaching
Medina-Celi she quitted her litter and mounted on horseback,
accomplishing the remainder of her journey in the saddle. Nine or ten days
before the safe-conduct expired she passed Perpignan and reached Salces,
where some French nobles were awaiting her.
Soon after her return to France she again took charge of the royal
children, who once more fell ill, this time with the measles, as Margaret
related in the following characteristic letter addressed to her brother, still a
prisoner in Spain:—
“My Lord,—The fear that I have gone through about your children,
without saying anything of it to Madame (Louise of Savoy), who was also
very ill, obliges me to tell you in detail the pleasure I feel at their recovery.
M. d’Angoulême caught the measles, with a long and severe fever;
afterwards the Duke of Orleans took them with a little fever; and then
Madame Madeleine without fever or pain; and by way of company the
Dauphin without suffering or fever. And now they all are quite cured and
very well; and the Dauphin does marvels in the way of studying, mingling
with his schooling a hundred thousand other occupations. And there is no
more question of passions, but rather of all the virtues; M. d’Orléans is
nailed to his book, and says that he wants to be good; but M. d’Angoulême
does more than the others, and says things that are to be esteemed rather as
prophecies than childish utterances, which you, my lord, would be amazed
to hear. Little Margot resembles myself; she will not be ill; but I am assured
here that she has very graceful ways, and is getting prettier than ever
Mademoiselle d’Angoulême (1) was.”

1 Génin’s Lettres de Marguerite, &c, p. 70. The
Mademoiselle d’Angoulême alluded to at the end of the letter
is Margaret herself.

Francis having consented to the onerous conditions imposed by
Charles V., was at last liberated. On March 17th, 1526, he was exchanged
for his two elder sons, who were to serve as hostages for his good faith, and
set foot upon the territory of Beam. He owed Margaret a deep debt of
gratitude for her efforts to hasten his release, and one of his first cares upon
leaving Spain was to wed her again in a fitting manner. He appears to have
opened matrimonial negotiations with Henry VIII. of England, (1) but,
fortunately for Margaret, without result. She, it seems, had already made
her choice. There was then at the French Court a young King, without a
kingdom, it is true, but endowed with numerous personal qualities. This was
Henry d’Albret, Count of Beam, and legitimate sovereign of Navarre, then
held by Charles V. in defiance of treaty rights. Henry had been taken
prisoner with Francis at Pavia and confined in the fortress there, from
which, however, he had managed to escape in the following manner.
Having procured a rope ladder in view of descending from the castle,
he ordered Francis de Rochefort, his page, to get into his bed and feign
sleep. Then he descended by the rope, the Baron of Arros and a valet
following him. In the morning, when the captain on duty came to see
Henry, as was his usual custom, he was asked by a page to let the King
sleep on, as he had been very ill during the night. Thus the trick was only
discovered when the greater part of the day had gone by, and the fugitives
were already beyond pursuit. (2)

1 Lettres de Marguerite, &c, p. 31.

2 Olhagaray’s Histoire de Faix, Beam, Navarre, &c,
Paris, 1609. p. 487.

As the young King of Navarre had spent a part of his youth at the
French Court, he was well known to Margaret, who apparently had a secret
fancy for him. He was in his twenty-fourth year, prepossessing, and
extremely brave. (1) There was certainly a great disproportion of age
between him and Margaret, but this must have served to increase rather than
attenuate her passion. She herself was already thirty-five, and judging by a

portrait executed about this period, (2) in which she is represented in
mourning for the Duke of Alençon, with a long veil falling from her cap,
her personal appearance was scarcely prepossessing.
The proposed alliance met with the approval of Francis, who behaved
generously to his sister. He granted her for life the enjoyment of the duchies
of Alençon and Berry, with the counties of Armagnac and Le Perche and
several other lordships. Finally, the marriage was celebrated on January
24th, 1527, at St. Germain-en-Laye, where, as Sauvai records, “there were
jousts, tourneying, and great triumph for the space of eight days or
thereabouts.” (3)

1 He was born at Sanguesa, April 1503, and became King of
Navarre in 1517.

2 This portrait is at the Bibliothèque Nationale in the
Recueil de Portraits au crayon by Clouet, Dumonstier, &c.
(fol. 88).

3 Antiquités de Paris, vol. ii. p. 688.

III.
The retirement of King Henry to Beam—Margaret’s intercourse with
her brother—The inscription at Chambord—Margaret’s adventure with
Bonnivet—Margaret’s relations with her husband—Her opinions upon love
and conjugal fidelity—Her confinements and her children—The Court in
Beam and the refugee Reformers—Margaret’s first poems—Her devices,
pastorals, and mysteries—The embellishment of Pau—Margaret at table
and in her study—Reforms and improvements in Beam—Works of defence at
Navarreinx—Scheme of refortifying Sauveterre.
Some historians have stated that in wedding his sister to Henry
d’Albret, Francis pledged himself to compel Charles V. to surrender his
brother-in-law’s kingdom of Navarre. This, however, was but a political
project, of which no deed guaranteed the execution. Francis no doubt
promised Margaret to make every effort to further the restitution, and she
constantly reminded him of his promise, as is shown by several of her
letters. However, political exigencies prevented Francis from carrying out
his plans, and in a diplomatic document concerning the release of the
children whom Charles held as hostages the following clause occurs: “Item,
the said Lord King promises not to help or favour the King of Navarre
(although he has married his only and dear beloved sister) in reconquering
his kingdom.” (1)
The indifference shown by Francis for the political fortunes of his
brother-in-law, despite the numerous and signal services the latter had
rendered him, justly discontented Henry, who at last resolved to withdraw
from the Court, where Montmorency, Brion, and several other personages,
his declared enemies, were in favour. Margaret apparently had to follow her
husband in his retirement, for Sainte-Marthe remarks: “When the King of
Navarre, disgusted with the Court, and seeing none of the promises that his
brother-in-law had made him realised, resolved to withdraw to Beam,
Margaret, although the keen air of the mountains was hurtful to her health,
and her doctors had threatened her with a premature death if she persevered
in braving the rigours of the climate, preferred to put her life in peril rather
than to fail in her duty by not accompanying her husband.” (2)

1 Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. No. 8546 (Béthune), fol. 107.

2 Oraison funèbre, &c, p. 70.

Various biographers express the opinion that this retirement took place
in 1529, shortly after the Peace of Cambray, and others give 1530 as the
probable date. Margaret, we find, paid a flying visit to Beam with her
husband in 1527; on January 7th, 1528, she was confined of her first child,
Jane, at Fontainebleau, and the following year she is found with her little
daughter at Longray, near Alençon. In 1530 she is confined at Blois of a
second child, John, Prince of Viana, who died at Alençon on Christmas Day
in the same year, when but five and a half months old. Then in 1531 her
letters show her with her mother at Fontainebleau; and Louise of Savoy
being stricken with the plague, then raging in France, Margaret closes her
eyes at Gretz, a little village between Fontainebleau and Nemours, on
September 22nd in that year.
It was after this event that the King and Queen of Navarre determined
to proceed to Beam, but so far as Margaret herself is concerned, it is certain
that retirement was never of long duration whilst her brother lived. She is
constantly to be found at Alençon, Fontainebleau, and Paris, being
frequently with the King, who did not like to remain separated from her for
any length of time. He was wont to initiate her into his political intrigues in
view of availing himself of her keen and subtle mind. Brantôme, referring
to this subject, remarks that her wisdom was such that the ambassadors who
“spoke to her were greatly charmed by it, and made great report of it to
those of their nation on their return; in this respect she relieved the King her
brother, for they (the ambassadors) always sought her after delivering the
chief business of their embassy, and often when there was important
business the King handed it over to her, relying upon her for its definite
resolution. She understood very well how to entertain and satisfy the
ambassadors with fine speeches, of which she was very lavish, and also
very clever at worming their secrets out of them, for which reason the King
often said that she helped him right well and relieved him of a great deal.”
(1)

1 OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. v. p. 222.

Margaret’s own letters supply proof of this. She is constantly to be
found intervening in state affairs and exercising her influence. She receives
the deputies from Basle, Berne, and Strasburg who came to Paris in 1537 to
ask Francis I. for the release of the imprisoned Protestants. She joins the
King at Valence when he is making preparations for a fresh war against
Charles V.; then she visits Montmorency at the camp of Avignon, which she
praises to her brother; next, hastening to Picardy, when the Flemish troops
are invading it, she writes from Amiens and speaks of Thérouenne and
Boulogne, which she has found well fortified.
Francis, however, did not value her society and counsel solely for
political reasons; he was also fond of conversing with her on literature, and
at times they composed amatory verses together. According to an oft-
repeated tradition, one day at the Château of Chambord, whilst Margaret
was boasting to her brother of the superiority of womankind in matters of
love, the King took a diamond ring from his finger and wrote on one of the
window panes this couplet:—

“Souvent femme varie, Bien fol est qui s’y fie.” (1)

Brantôme, who declares that he saw the inscription, adds, however,
that it consisted merely of three words, “Toute femme varie” (all women are
fickle), inscribed in large letters at the side of the window. (2) He says
nothing of any pane of glass (all window panes were then extremely small)
or of a diamond having been used; (3) and in all probability Francis simply
traced these words with a piece of chalk or charcoal on the side of one of
the deep embrasures, which are still to be seen in the windows of the
château.

1 “Woman is often fickle,
Crazy indeed is he who trusts her.”

2 Vies des Dames galantes, Disc. iv.

3 The practice of cutting glass with diamonds does not seem
to have been resorted to until the close of the sixteenth
century. See Les Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions de J.
Prévost, Lyons, 1584, part i. pp. 30, 31.

Margaret carried her complaisance for her brother so far as to excuse
his illicit amours, and she was usually on the best of terms with his
favourites. (1) It has been asserted that improper relations existed between
the brother and sister, but this charge rests solely upon an undated letter
from her to Francis, which may be interpreted in a variety of ways. Count
de la Ferrière, in his introduction to Margaret’s record of her expenditure,
(2) expresses the opinion that it was penned in 1525, prior to her hasty
departure from Spain; while M. Le Roux de Lincy assigns it to a later date,
remarking that it was probably written during one of the frequent quarrels
which arose between Margaret’s brother and her husband. However, they
are both of opinion that the letter does not bear the interpretation which
other writers have placed upon it. (3)

1 E. Fournier’s L’Esprit dans l’Histoire, Paris,
1860, p. 132 et seq.

2 Livre de Dépenses de Marguerite d’Angoulême, &c.
(Introduction).

3 See Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 246.

The only really well-authenticated love intrigue in which Margaret was
concerned—and in that she played a remarkably virtuous part—was her
adventure with the Admiral de Bonnivet, upon which the fourth story of the
Heptameron is based. (1) She was certainly unfortunate in both her
marriages. Her life with the Duke of Alençon has already been spoken of;
and as regards her second union, although contracted under apparently
favourable auspices, it failed to yield Margaret the happiness she had hoped
for. But four years after its celebration she wrote to the Marshal de
Montmorency: “Since you are with the King of Navarre, I have no fear but
that all will go well, provided you can keep him from falling in love with
the Spanish ladies.” (2) And again: “My nephew, I have received the letters
you wrote to me, by which I have learnt that you are a much better relation
than the King of Navarre is a good husband, for you alone have given me
news of the King (Francis) and of him, without his being willing to give
pleasure to a poor wife, big with child, by writing a single word to her.” (3)

1 Particulars concerning this adventure will be found in
the notes to Tale iv., and also in the Appendix to the

present volume (C).

2 Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 246.

3 Ibid., p. 248.

In another letter written to the Marshal at the same period she says: “If
you listen to the King of Navarre, he will make you commit so many
disorders that he will ruin you.” (1) Perhaps these words should not be
taken literally; still they furnish cause for reflection when it is remembered
that they were written by a woman just turned forty concerning her husband
who was not yet thirty years old.
Margaret’s views upon love and the affinity of souls were somewhat
singular, but they indicate an elevated and generous nature. In several
passages of the Heptameron she has expressed her opinion on these matters,
ardently defending the honour of her sex and condemning those wives who
show themselves indulgent as regards their husbands’ infidelities. (2) She
blames those who sow dissension between husbands and wives, leading
them on to blows; (3) and when some one asked her what she understood
perfect love to be, she made answer, “I call perfect lovers those who seek
some perfection in the object of their love, be it beauty, kindness, or good
grace, tending to virtue, and who have such high and honest hearts that they
will not even for fear of death do base things that honour and conscience
blame.”

1 Lettres de Marguerite, &c, p. 251.

2 Epilogue of Tale xxxvii.

3 Epilogue of Tale xlvi.

In reference to this subject of conjugal fidelity a curious story is told of
Margaret. One day at Mont-de-Marsan, upon seeing a young man convicted
of having murdered his father being led to execution, she remarked to those
about her that it was very wrong to put to death a young fellow who had not
committed the crime imputed to him. It was pointed out to her that the
judges had only condemned him upon conclusive proofs and the
acknowledgments that he himself had made. Margaret, however, persisted
in her remark, whereupon some of her intimates begged of her to justify it,
for it seemed to them at least singular. “I do not doubt,” she replied, “that

this poor wretch killed his mother’s husband, but he certainly did not kill
his own father.” (1)
Besides being unfortunate as regards her husbands, Margaret was also
denied a mother’s privileges. She experienced great suffering at her
confinements, (2) and on two occasions she was delivered of still-born
infants of the female sex.

1 Gabriel de Minut’s De la Beauté, Discours divers, &c.,
Lyons, 1587. p. 74.

2 Nouvelles Lettres de Marguerite, pp. 84 and 93.

She had centred many hopes upon her little boy, John, of whom she
was confined without accident, but he died, as already stated, in infancy,
and this misfortune was a great shock to her, though she tried to conceal it
by having the Te Deum sung at the funeral in lieu of the ordinary service,
and by setting up in the streets of Alençon the inscription, “God gave him,
God has taken him away.” However, from that time forward she never laid
aside her black dress, though later on she wore it trimmed with marten’s fur.
Her best known portrait (1) represents her attired in this style with the
quaint Bearnese cap, which she had also adopted, set upon her head.

1 Bibliothèque Nationale, Recueil de Portraits au crayon,
&c., fol. 46.

Not only did Margaret lose her son by death, but she was prevented
from enjoying the companionship of her daughter Jane. Francis, who never
once lost sight of his own interests, deemed it advisable to possess himself
of this child, who was the heiress to the throne of Navarre. Accordingly
when Jane was but two years old she was sent by the King to the Château of
Plessis-lès-Tours, where she was carefully brought up in strict seclusion.
To the fact that Margaret was never really happy with either of her
husbands, and that she was precluded from discharging a mother’s duties,
one may ascribe, in part, her fondness for gathering round her a Court in
which divines, scholars, and wits prominently figured. The great interest
which she took in religious matters, as is shown by so many of her letters,
(1) led her to shelter many of the persecuted Reformers in Beam; others she

saved from the stake, and frequently in writing to the King and Marshal de
Montmorency she begs for the release of some imprisoned heretic.

1 One of these letters, written by her either to Philiberta
of Savoy, Duchess of Nemours, or to Charlotte d’Orléans,
Duchess of Nemours, both of whom were her aunts, may be thus
rendered in English: “My aunt, on leaving Paris to escort
the King, Monsieur de Meaux (Bishop Briçonnet), sent me the
Gospels in French, translated by Fabry, word for word, which
he says we should read with as much reverence and as much
preparation to receive the Spirit of God, such as He has
left it us in His Holy Scriptures, as when we go to receive
it in the form of Sacrament. And inasmuch as Monsieur de
Villeroy has promised to deliver them to you, I have
requested him to do so, for these words (the Gospels) must
not fall into evil hands. I beg, my aunt, that if by their
means God grants you some grace, you will not forget her who
is above all else your good niece and sister, Margaret.”
Fabry’s translation of the Gospels was made in 1523-24.

Margaret’s religious views frequently caused dissension between her
and her husband, in whose presence she abstained from giving expression
to them. Hilarion de Coste mentions that “King Henry having one day been
informed that a form of prayer and instruction contrary to that of his fathers
was held in the chamber of the Queen, his wife, entered it intending to
chastise the minister, and finding that he had been hurried away, the
remains of his anger fell upon his wife, who received a blow from him, he
remarking, ‘Madam, you want to know too much about it,’ and he at once
sent word of the matter to King Francis.”
It was at Nérac that most of the divines protected by Margaret found a
refuge from the persecutions of the Sorbonne. Here she kept court in a
castle of which there now only remains a vaulted fifteenth-century gallery
formerly belonging to the northern wing. Nérac has, however, retained
intact a couple of quaint mediaeval bridges, which Margaret must have
ofttimes crossed in her many journeyings. Moreover, the townsfolk still
point out the so-called Palace of Marianne, said to have been built by
Margaret’s husband for one of his mistresses, and also the old royal baths,
which the Queen no doubt frequented.
It was at the castle of Nérac that Margaret’s favourite protégé, the
venerable Lefèvre d’Étaples, died at the age of one hundred and one, in the
presence of his patroness, to whom before expiring he declared that he had

never known a woman carnally in his life. However, he regretfully added
that in his estimation he had been guilty of a greater sin, for he had
neglected to lay down his life for his faith. Another partisan of the Reform,
Gerard Roussel, whom Margaret had almost snatched from the stake and
appointed Bishop of Oloron, had no occasion to express any such regret.
His own flock speedily espoused the doctrines of the Reformation, but
when he proceeded to Mauléon and tried to preach there, the Basques
refused to listen to him, and hacked the pulpit to pieces, the Bishop being
precipitated upon the flagstones, and so grievously injured that he died.
Beside the divines who sought an asylum at Nérac, there were various
noted men of letters, foremost among whom we may class the Queen’s two
secretaries, Clement Marot, the poet, and Peter Le Maçon, the translator of
Boccaccio’s Decameron. This translation was undertaken at the Queen’s
request, as Le Maçon states in his dedication to her, and it has always been
considered one of the most able literary works of the period. With Marot
and Le Maçon, but in the more humble capacity of valet, at the yearly
wages of one hundred and ten livres, there came the gay Bonaventure
Despériers, the author of Les Joyeux Devis; (1) other writers, such as John
Frotté, John de la Haye and Gabriel Chapuis, were also among Margaret’s
retainers.

1 Livre de Dépenses de Marguerite d’Angoulême.

She herself had long practised the writing of verses. It was in 1531,
and at Alençon, that she issued her first volume of poems, the Miroir de
l’Ame Pécheresse, (1) which created a great stir at the time, for when it was
re-issued in Paris by Augereau in 1533 (2) the Sorbonne denounced it as
unorthodox, and Margaret would have been branded as a heretic if Francis
had not intervened and ordered the Rector of the Sorbonne to withdraw the
decree censuring his sister’s work. Nor did that content the King, for he
caused Noël Béda, the syndic of the Faculty of Theology, to be arrested and
confined in a dungeon at Mont St. Michel, where he perished miserably.

1 Brunet’s Manual, 4th ed., vol. iii. p. 275.

2 A second edition also appeared at Alençon in the same
year.

Margaret thus gained the day, but the annoyance she had been
subjected to doubtless taught her to be prudent, for although she steadily
went on writing, sixteen years elapsed before any more of her poems were
published. In the meantime various manuscript copies, some of which are
still in existence, were made of them, notably one of the poem called
“Débat d’Amour” by Margaret, and re-christened “La Coche” by her
secretary, John de la Haye, when he subsequently published it in the
Marguerites de la Marguerite. This manuscript is enriched with eleven
curious miniatures, the last of which represents the Queen handing the
volume bound in white velvet (1) to the Duchess of Etampes, her brother’s
mistress, whose qualities the poem extols. The Queen of Navarre was on the
best of terms with this favourite, to whom in one of her letters she
recommends certain servants.
Margaret was not only given to versifying, but was fond of’ framing
devices, which she inscribed upon her books and furniture. At one time she
adopted as her device a marigold turning towards the sun’s rays, with the
motto, “Non inferiora secutus,” implying that she turned “all her acts,
thoughts, will, and affections towards the great Sun of Justice, God
Almighty.” (2)

1 From the Queen’s Livre de Dépenses, published by M. de
la Ferrière, we learn that this MS., with the miniatures and
binding, cost Margaret fifty golden crowns. It was formerly
in the possession of M. Jérôme Pichon, and was afterwards
acquired by M. Didot, at the sale of whose library it
realised £804. The MS. was recently in the possession of M.
de La Roche-la-Carelle.

2 Claude Paradin’s Dévises héroïques, Lyons, 1557, p. 41.

In her Miroir de l’Ame Pécheresse, previously referred to, there figures
another device composed merely of the three words “Ung pour tout;” and in
the manuscript of “La Coche” presented to the Duchess of Etampes, the
motto “Plus vous que moys” is inscribed beneath each of the miniatures.
Margaret also composed a series of devices for some jewels which her
brother presented to his favourite, Madame de Châteaubriant. Respecting
these Brantôme tells the following curious anecdote:—
“I have heard say, and hold on good authority, that when King Francis
I. had left Madame de Châteaubriant, his favourite mistress, to take

Madame d’Etampes, as one nail drives out another, Madame d’Etampes
begged the King to take back from the said Madame de Châteaubriant all
the finest jewels that he had given her, not on account of their cost and
value, for pearls and precious stones were not then so fashionable as they
have been since, but for the love of the fine devices that were engraved and
impressed upon them; which devices the Queen of Navarre, his sister, had
made and composed, for she was a mistress in such matters.
“King Francis granted the request, and promised that he would do it.
Having with this intent sent a gentleman to Madame de Châteaubriant to
ask for the jewels, she at once feigned illness, and put the gentleman off for
three days, when he was to have what he asked for. However, out of spite,
she sent for a goldsmith, and made him melt down all these jewels without
exception, and without having any respect for the handsome devices
engraved upon them. And afterwards, when the said gentleman returned,
she gave him all the jewels converted into gold ingots.
“‘Go,’ said she, ‘and take these to the King, and tell him that since he
has been pleased to take back from me that which he had given me so
freely, I restore it and send it back in golden ingots. As for the devices, I
have impressed them so firmly on my mind and hold them so dear in it, that
I could not let any one have and enjoy them save myself.’
“When the King had received all this, the ingots and the lady’s remark,
he only said, ‘Take her back all. What I did was not for the value, for I
would have restored her that twofold, but for the love of the devices, and
since she has thus destroyed them, I do not want the gold, and send it back.
She has shown in this matter more courage and generosity than it would
have been thought could come from a woman.’” (1)
Besides writing verses and framing devices, Margaret, as Brantôme
tells us, “often composed comedies and moralities, which were in those
days styled pastorals, and which she had played by the young ladies of her
Court.” (2)

1 OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. vii. p. 567.

2 Ibid., 8vo, vol. v. p. 219.

Hilarion de Coste states, moreover, that “she composed a tragi-comic
translation of almost the whole of the New Testament, which she caused to

be played before the King, her husband, having assembled with this object
some of the best actors of Italy; and as these buffoons are only born to give
pleasure and make time pass away, in order to amuse the company they
invariably introduced rondeaux and virelais against the ecclesiastics,
especially the monks and village priests.” (1)

1 M. Le Roux de Lincy points out that this statement is
exaggerated, for Margaret, instead of turning the whole of
the New Testament into verse, merely wrote four Mysteries
which mainly dealt with the childhood of Christ.

These performances took place at the Château of Pau, which Margaret
and her husband seem to have preferred to that of Nérac, though political
reasons often compelled them to fix their abode at the latter. Pau, however,
possessed the advantage of a mild climate, necessary for Margaret’s health,
besides being delightfully situated on the Bearnese Gave, the view from the
château extending over a fertile valley limited by the snow-capped
Pyrenees. There had been a château at Pau as early as the tenth century, but
the oldest portions of the structure now subsisting date from the time of
Edward III., when Pau was the capital of the celebrated Gaston-Phoebus.
The château was considerably enlarged and embellished in the fifteenth
century, but it was not until after Margaret’s marriage with Henry d’Albret
that the more remarkable decorative work was executed. Upon leaving
Nérac to reside at Pau, Margaret summoned a number of Italian artists and
confided the embellishment of the château to them.(1)
It was not, however, merely the château which Margaret beautified at
Pau. Already at Alençon she had laid out a charming park, which a
contemporary poet called a terrestrial paradise,(2) and upon coming to
reside at Pau she transformed the surrounding woods into delightful
gardens, pronounced to be the finest then existing in Europe.(3)

1 Some of the doors and windows of the château are
elaborately ornamented in the best style of the Renaissance,
whilst the grand staircase, although dating from Margaret’s
time, has vaulted arches, sometimes in the Romanesque and at
others in the Gothic style. Entwined on the friezes are the
initials H and M (Henry and Margaret), occasionally
accompanied by the letter R, implying Rex or Regina. On
the first floor of the chateau is the bedroom occupied by
Margaret’s husband, remarkable for its Renaissance chimney-

piece, and also a grand reception hall, now adorned with
tapestry made for Francis I. in Flanders. It was in this
latter room that the Count of Montgomery—the same who had
thrust out the eye of Henry II. at a tournament, and thereby
caused that monarch’s death—acting at the instigation of
Margaret’s daughter Jane, assembled the Catholic noblemen of
Beam on August 24, 1569, and, after entertaining them with a
banquet, had them treacherously massacred. Bascle de
Lagrèze’s Château de Pau, Paris, 1854.

2 Le Recueil de l’Antique pré-excellence de Gaule, &c., by
G. Le Roville, Paris, 1551 (fol. 74).

3 Hilarion de Coste’s Vies et Éloges des Dames illustres,
&c., vol. ii. p. 272.

Some idea of their appearance may be gained from a couple of the
miniatures adorning a curious manuscript catechism composed for Margaret
and now in the Arsenal Library at Paris.(1)

1 Manuscrits théologiques français, No. 60, Initiatoire
Instruction en la Religion chrétienne, &c. In one of these
miniatures the Saviour is represented carrying the cross,
followed by Henry of Navarre, his brother Charles d’Albret,
Margaret, and other personages, all of whom bear crosses,
whilst in the background are some pleasure-grounds with a
castle, a little waterfall, and a lake. Another miniature in
the same manuscript shows King Henry of Navarre with a
flower in his hand, which he seems to be offering to the
Queen, who stands in the background among a party of
courtiers. The King wears a surtout of cloth of gold, edged
with ermine, over a blue jerkin, and a red cap with a white
feather. Margaret is also arrayed in cloth of gold, but with
a black cap and wimple. She is standing in a garden enclosed
by a railing, and adorned with a fountain in the form of a
temple which rises among groves and arbours. Beyond a white
crenellated wall is a castle which has been identified with
that of Pau. On fol. 1 of the same MS. the artist has
depicted Queen Margaret’s escutcheon, by which we find that
she quartered the arms of France with those of Navarre,
Aragon, Castile, Leon, Beam, Bigorre, Evreux, and Albret.

The Court which Margaret kept in turns at Alençon, Nérac, and Pau
does not appear to have been so sumptuous and gay as some of her
biographers assert. Brantôme mentions that the Queen’s two tables were
always served with frugality, and Sainte-Marthe states that “she talked at
dinner and supper now of medicine, of food wholesome or unwholesome

for the human body, and of objects of nature with Masters Schyron,
Cormier, and Esterpin, her expert and learned doctors, who carefully
watched her eat and drink, as is done with princes; now she would speak of
history or of the precepts of philosophy with other very erudite personages,
with whom her house was never unfurnished; at another time she would
enter into conversation on her faith and the Christian religion with
Monsieur Gerard, Bishop of Oloron. Altogether there was not a single
moment that was not employed by her in honest, pleasant, and useful
conversation.” (1)
The same panegyrist tells us of Margaret’s favourite occupations,
mentioning that when she was alone in her room she more often held a
book in her hand than a distaff, a pen than a spindle, and the ivory of her
tablets than a needle. He then adds: “And if she applied herself to tapestry
or other needlework, such as was to her a pleasant occupation, she had
beside her some one who read to her, either from a historian or a poet, or
some other notable and useful author; or else she dictated some meditation
which was written down.” (2)

1 Oraison funèbre, &c., p. 60.

2 Ibid., p. 68.

Margaret’s time was far from being wholly occupied in this manner,
for she actively assisted her husband in carrying out improvements and
reforms in Beam. The result was that the country, naturally good and fertile,
but left in bad condition, uncultivated and sterile through the carelessness of
its inhabitants, soon changed its appearance owing to the efforts of Henry
and his wife. From all the provinces of France labourers were attracted who
settled there and improved and fertilised the fields.(1)

1 Vies el Éloges des Dames illustres, vol. ii. p. 272.

Henry d’Albret also devoted himself to the placing of the country in a
proper state of defence, and fortified several of the towns. Navarreinx,
commanding the valley of the Gave of Oloron, was virtually rebuilt by him
and transformed into a perfect stronghold, as was evidenced during the
religious wars, when it successfully withstood the artillery of Terrade, the
Catholic commander. Long afterwards, when Vauban inaugurated his new

system of fortification, he came to Navarreinx, and on seeing the ramparts
raised by Margaret’s husband was so favourably impressed, that instead of
levelling them to the ground he contented himself with adding to them and
making various improvements. Henry d’Albret was also anxious to refortify
Sauveterre, which the Prince of Orange, with one of the Imperial armies,
had captured in 1523, when he half-demolished the old castle of Montreal,
then the most formidable citadel in Beam. However, as time and money
were lacking, Henry had to abandon his plans, and the ruins left by the
Imperialists, the ivy-clad keep, and mutilated bridge over the Gave soon fell
into irremediable decay.(1)

1 M. Paul Perret’s Pyrénées françaises, vol. ii. p. 303.

IV.

Margaret’s attachment to her daughter—Refusal of Jane to
marry the Duke of Clevés—Intervention of Margaret—The
wedding at Châtelherault and the fall of the Constable de
Montmorency—Margaret and her husband at Caulerets—The
“Heptameron”—Illness and death of Francis I.—Margaret’s
anxiety and grief—Her “Marguerites de la Marguerite”—Jane
d’Albret’s second marriage—Death of Margaret at Odos or
Audaux——Her funeral at Lescar—Destruction of her tomb.

Whilst Margaret was living amongst divines and scholars at Pau and
Nérac, her mind, as her letters indicate, constantly turned to her daughter
Jane, whom Aimée de la Fayette, wife of the Bailiff of Caen, was bringing
up at Plessis-lès-Tours. Margaret was only able to see Jane at rare intervals
during some of her trips to France, and she was mainly indebted to
sympathising friends for news of the little Princess’s condition and health.
All her maternal tenderness was concentrated on this daughter, and
whenever the child was ailing she became distracted.
Sainte-Marthe records that in December 1537, while Margaret was
sojourning in Paris, her daughter, then scarcely nine years old, fell seriously
ill at the royal house of Plessis-lès-Tours; and as it was rumoured amongst
the Court, then at Paris, that the Princess was threatened with death, her
virtuous mother, Margaret, at about four o’clock in the evening, ordered her
litter to be brought, saying that she would go and see her daughter, and that
all her people should prepare to start. There was nothing ready, the officials
and servants were absent, and scattered about the town of Paris and the
neighbouring villages. It was already dark, for this was during the shortest
days of the year, the weather too was adverse on account of the rain, and
neither her litter nor her baggage mules were at hand. Seeing this, the
courageous Queen borrowed the litter of Madame Margaret, her niece,(1)
got in it, and contenting herself with scant escort, started from Paris and
went as far as Bourg-la-Reine.

1 The daughter of Francis I., subsequently Duchess of Savoy.

“When they had arrived there she did not alight at her lodgings, but
went straight to the church, which she at once entered, saying to those about
her, that her heart told her I know not what concerning her daughter’s fate,
and affectionately begging them all to withdraw and leave her alone for an
hour in the church. All obeyed and in great uneasiness waited for their
mistress at the church door; the Sénéchale de Poitou,(1) a very faithful lady,
and very solicitous about Margaret, alone entering with her. Margaret
having gone in, kneels down before the image of Jesus crucified, prays to
God from the depths of her heart, sighs, weeps, confesses all her
transgressions, and laying to herself alone the cause of her daughter’s
illness, humbly asks pardon, and begs that the sufferer’s restoration to
health may be granted. After this act of faith Margaret felt relieved, and she
had scarcely arrived at her lodgings when the Bishop of Mende came to
announce to her that her daughter was in the way of recovery.” (2)

1 Brantôme’s grandmother.

2 Oraison funèbre, &c, p. 38.

When Jane was barely twelve years old Charles V. asked her in
marriage for his son Philip, but Francis, who was by no means anxious to
see the Spaniards established on the northern side of the Pyrenees, preferred
that the girl should marry William III., Duke of Cleves. It has frequently
been asserted that Francis on this occasion exercised compulsion not only
upon his niece, but also upon the King and Queen of Navarre, who vainly
protested against this abuse of power. The truth is, that Margaret not only
favoured the marriage, but threatened to have Jane whipped if she persisted
in her refusal. Moreover, the little bride having declared to Francis I. that
she protested against the alliance, Margaret wrote to her brother as follows:
—
“My Lord, in my extreme desolation, I have only one single comfort, it
is that of knowing with certainty that neither the King of Navarre nor
myself have ever had any other wish or intention than that of obeying you,
not only as regards a marriage, but in whatever you might order. But now,
my lord, having heard that my daughter, neither recognising the great
honour you do her in deigning to visit her, nor the obedience that she owes
you, nor that a girl should have no will of her own, has spoken to you so
madly as to say to you that she begged of you she might not be married to

M. de Cleves, I do not know, my lord, either what I ought to think of it, or
what I ought to say to you about it, for I am grieved to the heart, and have
neither relative nor friend in the world from whom I can seek advice or
consolation. And the King of Navarre is on his part so amazed and grieved
at it that I have never seen him before so provoked. I cannot imagine
whence comes this great boldness, of which she had never spoken to us.
She excuses herself towards us in that she is more intimate with you than
with ourselves, but this intimacy should not give rise to such boldness,
without ever as I know seeking advice from any one, for if I knew any
creature who had put such an idea into her head, I would make such a
demonstration that you, my lord, would know that this madness is contrary
to the will of the father and mother, who have never had, and never will
have, any other than your own.” (1)
The rebellion of Jane did not prevent the marriage, which was
solemnised at Châtelherault on July 15th, 1540. According to some
authorities, Francis was so determined upon the alliance that he required the
Duke of Cleves to enter his bride’s bed in the presence of witnesses, so that
the marriage should be deemed beyond annulment.(2)

1 Nouvelles Lettres, &c., p. 176.

2 Henri Martin’s Histoire de France. The marriage,
however, was not really consummated (Nouvelles Lettres,
&c., pp. 236, 237), and it was eventually annulled by Pope
Paul III., to whom Francis applied for a divorce when the
Duke of Cleves deserted his cause for that of Charles V.

It was at Châtelherault on this occasion that Margaret triumphed over
the Constable de Montmorency, who in earlier years had been her close
friend, and with whom she had carried on such a voluminous
correspondence. Montmorency had requited her good services with
ingratitude, repeatedly endeavouring to estrange Francis from her.
Brantôme gives an instance of this in the following passage:—“I have heard
related,” he says, “by a person of good faith that the Constable de
Montmorency, then in the highest favour, speaking of this matter of religion
one day with the King, made no difficulty or scruple about telling him, that
‘if he really wished to exterminate the heretics of his kingdom, he ought to
begin at his Court and with his nearest relatives, mentioning the Queen his
sister,’ to which the King replied, ‘Do not speak of her; she loves me too

much. She will never believe anything save what I believe, and will never
take up a religion prejudicial to the State.’” (1)

1 OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. v. (Dames illustres),
p. 219.

As soon as Margaret became aware of Montmorency’s conduct she
ceased all correspondence with him and steadily endeavoured to effect his
overthrow, which was brought about on the occasion of Jane’s marriage. “It
was necessary to carry the little bride to the church,” says Brantôme, “as
she was laden with jewels and a dress of gold and silver, and owing to this
and the weakness of her body, was not able to walk. So the King ordered
the Constable to take his little niece and carry her to the church, at which all
the Court were greatly astonished, for at such a ceremony this was a duty
little suited and honourable for a Constable, and might very well have been
given to another. However, the Queen of Navarre was in no way displeased,
but said, ‘Behold! he who wished to ruin me with the King my brother now
serves to carry my daughter to church.’ The Constable,” adds Brantôme,
“was greatly displeased at the task, and sorely vexed to serve as such a
spectacle to every one; and he began to say, ‘It is now all over with my
favour. Farewell to it.’ Thus it happened, for after the wedding festival and
dinner he had his dismissal and left at once.” (1)
After the marriage of her daughter Margaret returned to Paris, and
thence repaired to Mont-de-Marsan to spend the winter of 1540-41. Late in
the following spring she went to Cauterets in the Pyrenees to take the baths.
Writing during Lent to her brother she states that her husband having had a
fall will repair to Cauterets by the advice of his doctors,(2) and that she
intends to accompany him to prevent him from worrying and to transact his
business for him, “for when one is at the baths one must live like a child
without any care.” (3)

1 OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. v. (Dames illustres),
p. 220.

2 Henry d’Albret had already undergone treatment at the
Pyrenean baths after his escape from Pavia, when, however,
he stayed at Eaux-Bonnes.

3 Génin’s Nouvelles Lettres, &c., p. 189.

This was not her only motive in going to Cauterets apparently, for in a
letter to Duke William of Cleves, her daughter’s husband, dated April 1541,
she states that as she is suffering from a caterre which “has fallen upon half
her neck,” and compels her to keep her bed, the doctors have advised her to
take “the natural baths,” and hope that she will be cured by the end of May,
providing she follows all their prescriptions.(1)

1 A. de Ruble’s Mariage de Jeanne d’ Albret,
Paris, 1877, p. 86, et seq.

That this visit to Cauterets left a deep impression upon the mind of
Margaret is evidenced by the work upon which her literary fame rests. The
scene selected for the prologue of the Heptameron is Cauterets and the
surrounding country; still it is evident that the book was not commenced
upon the occasion referred to, for in the prologue Margaret alludes to
historical events which took place in 1543 and 1544, and she speaks of
them as being of recent occurrence at her time of writing. Now we know
that in April 1544 she met her brother at Alençon, and made a long stay in
the duchy, and the probability is that she commenced the Heptameron at
that time. It was the work of several years, penned in a desultory style
whilst Margaret was travelling about her northern duchy or her southern
kingdom. Like all persons of high station, she journeyed in a litter, and
Brantôme informs us that her equipage was a modest one, for “she never
had more than three baggage-mules and six for her two litters, though she
had two, three, or four chariots for her ladies.” (1) Brantôme—who it may
be mentioned was brought up at Margaret’s Court under the care of his
grandmother, Louise de Daillon, wife of Andrew de Vivonne, Seneschal of
Poitou—also states that the Queen composed the Heptameron mainly “in
her litter, while journeying about, for she had more important occupations
when she was at home. I have thus heard it related by my grandmother, who
always went with her in her litter as her lady of honour, and held the
escritoire with which she wrote, and she set them (the stories) down in
writing as speedily and skilfully as if they had been dictated to her, if not
more so.” (2)

1 Lalanne’s OEuvres de Brantôme, 1875, vol. ii. p. 214.

2 Ibid., vol. viii. p. 226.

In 1545 and 1546 we find Margaret in Beam, whence she addresses
New Year epistles to her brother expressing her sorrow at being separated
from him. In the spring of the latter year she visits him at Plessis-lès-Tours.
The King of France—contrary to all tradition—enjoys at this period as good
health as the most robust man in his kingdom.(1) In 1547 Margaret repairs
to a convent at Tusson in the Angoumois to spend Lent there, and soon
afterwards is despatching courier after courier to the Court at Rambouillet
for news of Francis, who is dying. Such is her anguish of suspense that she
exclaims, “Whoever comes to my door to announce to me the cure of the
King my brother, were such a messenger weary, tired, muddy, and dirty, I
would embrace and kiss him like the cleanest prince and gentleman in
France; and if he lacked a bed and could not find one to repose upon, I
would give him mine, and would sleep on the floor for the sake of the good
news he brought me.” (2)

1 Lettres de Marguerite, &c., p. 473.

2 OEuvres de Brantôme, 8vo, vol. v. p. 233.

No one, however, had the courage to tell her the truth. It was a poor
maniac who by her tears gave her to understand that the King was no longer
alive. Sainte-Marthe records the incident as follows: “Now the day that
Francis was taken away from us (Margaret herself has since told me so), she
thought whilst sleeping that she saw him looking pale, and calling for her in
a sad voice, which she took for a very evil sign; and feeling doubtful about
it, she sent several messengers to the Court to ascertain the condition of the
King her brother, but not a single one of them returned to her. One day, her
brother having again appeared to her while she was asleep (he had already
been dead fifteen days), (1) she asked the members of her household if they
had heard any news of the King.

1 Francis I. died March 31, 1547.

“They replied to her that he was very well, and she then went to the
church. On her way there she summoned Thomas le Coustellier, a young
man of good intelligence and her secretary, and as she was telling him the
substance of a letter that she wished to write to a Princess of the Court, to
obtain from her some news of the King’s health, she heard on the other side

of the cloister a nun, whose brain was somewhat turned, lamenting and
weeping loudly. Margaret, naturally inclined to pity, hastened to this
woman, asked her why she was weeping, and encouraged her to tell her
whether she wished for anything. Then the nun began to lament still more
loudly, and looking at the Queen, told her that she was deploring her ill-
fortune. When Margaret heard these words she turned towards those who
were with her, and said to them, ‘You were hiding the King’s death from
me, but the Spirit of God has revealed it to me through this maniac.’ This
said, she turned to her room, knelt down, and humbly thanked the Lord for
all the goodness He was pleased to show her.” (1)
After losing her brother, Margaret remained in retirement at the
convent of Tusson. She stayed there, says Brantôme, for four months,
leading a most austere life and discharging the duties of abbess. She still
continued in retirement on her return to Beam, mainly occupying herself
with literary work. It was in 1547, subsequent to the death of Francis, that
John de la Haye, her secretary, published at Lyons her Marguerites de la
Marguerite, poems which she had composed at various periods, and which
De la Haye probably transcribed at her dictation.(2)

1 Oraison funèbre, &c., p. 103.

2 Sainte-Marthe states that she would sit with two
secretaries, one on either side, and dictate poetry to the
one and letters to the other.

Margaret’s daughter Jane was at this period at the Court of France,
living in extravagant style, as is shown by the letters in which Margaret
declares that the Princess’s expenditure is insupportable. She herself spent
but little money upon personal needs, though she devoted considerable
sums to charity. In October 1548 she emerged from her seclusion to attend
the second marriage of her daughter, who now became the wife of Anthony
de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. From Moulins, where the ceremony took
place, Margaret repaired to the Court at Fontainebleau. Here all was
changed: there was a new King, and Diana of Poitiers occupied the position
of the Duchess of Etampes. After returning to Beam for Christmas,
Margaret spent the Lent of 1549 in retreat at Tusson, where she apparently
divided her time between prayer and literary labour. She was still writing
the Heptameron, as is shown by the sixty-sixth tale, which chronicles an

adventure that befell her daughter and Anthony de Bourbon on their
marriage trip during the winter of 1548-49. It may be noted, too, that the
scene of the sixty-ninth story is laid at the Castle of Odos near Tarbes, and
as Margaret came to reside at the castle in the autumn of 1549, this tale was
probably written during her sojourn there. Whilst adding fresh stories to the
Heptameron, she was not neglecting poetry, for from this period also dates
the Miroir de Jésus Christ crucifié, which Brother Olivier published in
1556, stating that it was the Queen’s last work, and that she had handed it to
him a few days before her death.
Margaret had long been in failing health and was growing extremely
weak. Brantôme, on the authority of his grandmother, states that when her
approaching death was announced to her, she found the monition a very
bitter one, saying that she was not yet so aged but that she might live some
years longer. She was then in her fifty-eighth year. Sainte-Marthe relates
that shortly before her death she saw in a dream a very beautiful woman
holding in her hand a crown of all sorts of flowers which she showed to her,
telling her that she would soon be crowned with it.(1)

1 Oraison funèbre, &c., p. 104.

She interpreted this dream as signifying that her end was near, and
from that day forward abandoned the administration of her property to the
King of Navarre, refusing to occupy herself with any other matter than that
of her approaching end. After dictating her will she fell into her final illness,
which lasted twenty days according to some authorities, and eight according
to others. It seized her one night at Odos whilst she was watching a comet,
which it was averred had appeared to notify the death of Pope Paul III. “It
was perhaps to presage her own,” naively remarks Brantôme, who adds that
while she was looking at the comet her mouth suddenly became partially
paralysed, whereupon her doctor, M. d’Escuranis, led her away and made
her go to bed. Her death took place on December 21st, 1549, and just before
expiring she grasped a crucifix that lay beside her and murmured, “Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus.” (1)
Although the King of Navarre had not always lived in perfect accord
with his wife, he none the less keenly felt the loss he had sustained by her
death. Olhagaray represents him when deprived of Margaret as no longer
showing the same firm purpose of life, but as sad, discontented, and altering

his plans at every trifle.(2) He gave orders that Margaret’s remains should
be interred in the Cathedral of Lescar, some four and a half miles from the
Château of Pau, with which it is said to have been at that time connected by
a subterranean passage. Several of the Navarrese sovereigns had already
been buried there, for the See was a kind of primacy, the Bishops being ex-
officio presidents of the States of Beam.(3)

1 M. Lalanne, in his edition of Brantôme’s works, maintains
that Margaret did not die at Odos, near Tarbes, but at
Audaux, near Orthez, basing this contention on the fact that
Brantôme calls the castle “Audos in Beam,” and that Odos is
in Bigorre. Tradition, however, has always pointed to the
latter locality, though, on the other hand, it is stated
that less than half a century after Margaret’s death Odos
was nothing but a ruin, and had long been in that condition.
In 1596 Henry IV. gave the property to John de Lassalle, by
whose descendants the château was restored (Bascle de
Lagrèze’s Chateau de Pau, &c.).

2 Histoire de Foix et de Béarn, &c., p. 506.

3 Lescar having ceased to be a bishopric since 1790, its
church, which still exists, no longer ranks as a cathedral.

It was in this quaint old cathedral church, dating, so archaeologists
assert, from the eleventh century, that Margaret’s remains were interred
with all due pomp and ceremony. The Duchess of Estouteville headed the
procession, followed by the Duke of Montpensier, the Duke of Nevers, the
Duke of Aumale, the Duke of Etampes, the Marquis of Maine, and M. de
Rohan. Then came the grands deuils or chief mourners, led by the Duke of
Vendôme, and three lords carrying the crown, sceptre, and hand of justice.
The Viscount of Lavedan officiated as grand master of the ceremonies, and
special seats were assigned to the States of Navarre, Foix, Beam, and
Bigorre, and to the chancellor, counsellors, and barons of the country;
whilst on a platform surrounded by lighted tapers there was displayed an
effigy of the Queen robed in black.(1) After the ceremony a banquet was
served in accordance with Bearnese custom, the chief mourners being
invited to the Duke of Vendôme’s table, whilst the others were served in
different rooms.(2)

1 Lettres de Marguerite (Pièces justificatives. No. xi.).

2 Bascle de Lagrèze’s Château de Pau, &c.

A few years later—in June 1555—the remains of King Henry,
Margaret’s husband, were in turn brought to Lescar for burial. The tombs of
husband and wife, however, have alike vanished, having been swept away
during the religious wars, when Lescar was repeatedly stormed and sacked,
when Huguenot and Catholic, in turn triumphant, vented their religious
frenzy upon the graves of their former sovereigns; and to-day the only
tombs to be found in the old cathedral are those of personages interred there
since the middle of the seventeenth century.
January 1893.

ON THE HEPTAMERON,
WITH SOME NOTICE OF PRECEDENT COLLECTIONS OF
TALES IN FRANCE, OF THE AUTHOR, AND OF HER OTHER
WORKS.
It is probable that every one who has had much to do with the study of
literature has conceived certain preferences for books which he knows not
to belong absolutely to the first order, but which he thinks to have been
unjustly depreciated by the general judgment, and which appeal to his own
tastes or sympathies with particular strength. One of such books in my own
case is THE HEPTAMERON of Margaret of Navarre. I have read it again
and again, sometimes at short intervals, sometimes at longer, during the
lapse of some five-and-twenty years since I first met with it. But the place
which it holds in my critical judgment and in my private affections has
hardly altered at all since the first reading. I like it as a reader perhaps rather
more than I esteem it as a critic; but even as a critic, and allowing fully for
the personal equation, I think that it deserves a far higher place than is
generally accorded to it.
Three mistakes, as it seems to me, pervade most of the estimates,
critical or uncritical, of the Heptameron, the two first of old date, the third
of recent origin. The first is that it is a comparatively feeble imitation of a
great original, and that any one who knows Boccaccio need hardly trouble
himself to know Margaret of Navarre. The second is that it is a loose if not
obscene book, disgraceful for a lady to have written (or at least mothered),
and not very creditable for any one to read. The third is that it is interesting
as the gossip of a certain class of modern newspapers is interesting, because
it tells scandal about distinguished personages, and has for its interlocutors
other distinguished personages, who can be identified without much
difficulty, and the identification of whom adds zest to the reading. All these
three seem to me to be mistakes of fact and of judgment. In the first place,
the Heptameron borrows from its original literally nothing but plan. Its
stories are quite independent; the similarity of name is only a bookseller’s
invention, though a rather happy one; and the personal setting, which is in
Boccaccio a mere framework, has here considerable substance and interest.

In the second place, the accusation of looseness is wildly exaggerated.
There is one very coarse but not in the least immoral story in the
Heptameron; there are several broad jests on the obnoxious cloister and its
vices, there are many tales which are not intended virginibus puerisque, and
there is a pervading flavour of that half-French, half-Italian courtship of
married women which was at the time usual everywhere out of England.
The manners are not our manners, and what may be called the moral tone is
distinguished by a singular cast, of which more presently. But if not entirely
a book for boys and girls, the Heptameron is certainly not one which
Southey need have excepted from his admirable answer in the character of
author of “The Doctor,” to the person who wondered whether he (Southey)
could have daughters, and if so, whether they liked reading. “He has
daughters: they love reading: and he is not the man I take him for if they are
not ‘allowed to open’ any book in his library.” The last error, if not so
entirely inconsistent with intelligent reading of the book as the first and
second, is scarcely less strange to me. For, in the first place, the
identification of the personages in the framework of the Heptameron
depends upon the merest and, as it seems to me, the idlest conjecture; and,
in the second, the interest of the actual tittle-tattle, whether it could be
fathered on A or B or not, is the least part of the interest of the book.
Indeed, the stories altogether are, as I think, far less interesting than the
framework.
Let us see, therefore, if we cannot treat the Heptameron in a somewhat
different fashion from that in which any previous critic, even Sainte-Beuve,
has treated it. The divisions of such treatment are not very far to seek. In the
first place, let us give some account of the works of the same class which
preceded and perhaps patterned it. In the second, let us give an account of
the supposed author, of her other works, and of the probable character of
her connection with this one. In the third, without attempting dry argument,
let us give some sketch of the vital part, which we have called the
framework, and some general characteristics of the stories. And, in the
fourth and last, let us endeavour to disengage that peculiar tone, flavour,
note, or whatever word may be preferred, which, as it seems to me at least,
at once distinguishes the Heptameron from other books of the kind, and
renders it peculiarly attractive to those whose temperament and taste
predisposes them to be attracted. For there is a great deal of pre-established
harmony in literature and literary tastes; and I have a kind of idea that every

man has his library marked out for him when he comes into the world, and
has then only got to get the books and read them.
Margaret herself refers openly enough to the example of the
Decameron, which had been translated by her own secretary, Anthony le
Maçon, a member of her literary coterie, and not improbably connected
with the writing or redacting of the Heptameron itself. Nor were later
Italian tale-tellers likely to be without influence at a time when French was
being “Italianated” in every possible way, to the great disgust of some
Frenchmen. But the Italian ancestors or patterns need not be dealt with here,
and can be discovered with ease and pleasure by any one who wishes in the
drier pages of Dunlop, or in the more flowery and starry pages of Mr.
Symonds’ “History of the Renaissance in Italy.” The next few pages will
deal only with the French tale-tellers, whose productions before Margaret’s
days were, if not very numerous, far from uninteresting, and whose
influence on the slight difference of genre which distinguishes the tales
before us from Italian tales was by no means slight.
In France, as everywhere else, prose fiction, like prose of all kinds,
was considerably later in production than verse, and short tales of the kind
before us were especially postponed by the number, excellence, and
popularity of the verse fabliaux. Of these, large numbers have come down
to us, and they exactly correspond in verse to the tales of the Decameron
and the Heptameron in prose, except that the satirical motive is even more
strongly marked, and that touches of romantic sentiment are rarer. This
element of romance, however, appears abundantly in the long prose
versions of the Arthurian and other legends, and we have a certain number
of short prose stories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of which the
most famous is that of Aucassin et Nicolette. These latter, however, are
rather short romances than distinct prose tales of our kind. Of that kind the
first famous book in French, and the only famous book, besides the one
before us, is the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The authorship of this book is
very uncertain. It purports to be a collection of stories told by different
persons of the society of Louis XI., when he was but Dauphin, and was in
exile in Flanders under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy. But it has
of late years been very generally assigned (though on rather slender grounds
of probability, and none of positive evidence), to Anthony de la Salle, the
best French prose writer of the fifteenth century, except Comines, and one
on whom, with an odd unanimity, conjectural criticism has bestowed,

besides his acknowledged romance of late chivalrous society, Petit Jehan de
Saintré (a work which itself has some affinities with the class of story
before us), not only the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, but the famous satirical
treatise of the Quinze Joyes du Mariage, and the still more famous farce of
Pathelin. Some of the Nouvelles, moreover, have been putatively fathered
on Louis XI. himself, in which case the royal house of France would boast
of two distinguished taletellers instead of one. However this may be, they
all display the somewhat hard and grim but keen and practical humour
which seems to have distinguished that prince, which was a characteristic of
French thought and temper at the time, and which perhaps arose with the
misfortunes and hardships of the Hundred Years’ War. The stories are
decidedly amusing, with a considerably greater, though also a much ruder,
vis comica than that of the Heptameron; and they are told in a style
unadorned indeed, and somewhat dry, lacking the simplicity of the older
French, and not yet attaining to the graces of the newer, but forcible,
distinct, and sculpturesque, if not picturesque. A great license of subject and
language, and an enjoyment of practical jokes of the roughest, not to say the
most cruel character, prevail throughout, and there is hardly a touch of
anything like romance; the tales alternating between jests as broad as those
of the Reeve’s and Miller’s tales in Chaucer (themselves exactly
corresponding to verse fabliaux, of which the Cent Nouvelles are exact
prose counterparts, and perhaps prose versions), and examples of what has
been called “the humour of the stick,” which sometimes trenches hard upon
the humour of the gallows and the torture-chamber. These characteristics
have made the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles no great favourites of late, but
their unpopularity is somewhat undeserved. For all their coarseness, there is
much genuine comedy in them, and if the prettiness of romantic and literary
dressing-up is absent from them, so likewise is the insincerity thereof. They
make one of the most considerable prose books of what may be called
middle French literature, and they had much influence on the books that
followed, especially on this of Margaret’s. Indeed, one of the few examples
to be found between the two, the Grand Paragon de Nouvelles Nouvelles of
Nicolas de Troyes (1535), obviously takes them for model. But Nicolas was
a dull dog, and neither profited by his model nor gave any one else
opportunity to profit by himself.
Rabelais, the first book of whose Pantagruel anticipated the Paragon
by three years, while the Gargantua coincided with it, was a great authority

at the Court of Margaret’s brother Francis, dedicated one of the books (the
third) of Pantagruel to her, before her death, in high-flown language, as
esprit abstrait, ravy et ecstatic, and must certainly have been familiar
reading of hers, and of all the ladies and gentlemen, literary and
fashionable, of her Court. But there is little resemblance to be found in his
style and hers. The short stories which Master Francis scatters about his
longer work are, indeed, models of narration, but his whole tone of thought
and manner of treatment are altogether alien from those of the “ravished
spirit” whom he praises. His deliberate coarseness is not more different
from her deliberate delicacy than his intensely practical spirit from her
high-flown romanticism (which makes one think of, and may have
suggested, the Court of La Quinte), and her mixture of devout and amatory
quodlibetation from his cynical criticism and all-dissolving irony. But there
was a contemporary of Rabelais who forms a kind of link between him and
Margaret, whose work in part is very like the Heptameron, and who has
been thought to have had more than a hand in it. This was Bonaventure
Despériers, a man whose history is as obscure as his works are interesting.
Born in or about the year 1500, he committed suicide in 1544, either during
a fit of insanity, or, as has been thought more likely, in order to escape the
danger of the persecution which, in the last years of the reign of Francis,
threatened the unorthodox, and which Margaret, who had more than once
warded it off from them, was then powerless to avert. Despériers, to speak
truth, was in far more danger of the stake than most of his friends. The
infidelity of Rabelais is a matter of inference only, and some critics (among
whom the present writer ranks himself) see in his daring ridicule of existing
abuses nothing inconsistent with a perfectly sound, if liberally conditioned,
orthodoxy. Despériers, like Rabelais, was a Lucianist, but his modernising
of Lucian (the remarkable book called Cymbalum Mundï), though
pretending to deal with ancient mythology, has an almost unmistakable
reference to revealed religion. It is not, however, by this work or by this
side of his character at all that Despériers is brought into connection with
the work of Margaret, who, if learned and liberal, and sometimes tending to
the new ideas in religion, was always devout and always orthodox in
fundamentals. Besides the Cymbalum Mundi, he has left a curious book, not
published, like the Heptameron itself, till long after his own death, and
entitled Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis. The tales of which it
consists are for the most part very short, some being rather sketches or

outlines of tales than actually worked-out stories, so that, although there are
no less than a hundred and twenty-nine of them, the whole book is probably
not half the bulk of the Heptameron itself. But they are extremely well
written, and the specially interesting thing about them is, that in them there
appears, and appears for the first time (unless we take the Heptameron itself
as earlier, which is contrary to all probability), the singular and, at any rate
to some persons, very attractive mixture of sentiment and satire, of learning
and a love of refined society, of joint devotion to heavenly and earthly love,
of voluptuous enjoyment of the present, blended and shadowed with a sense
of the night that cometh, which delights us in the prose of the Heptameron,
and in the verse not only of all the Pléiade poets in France, but of Spenser,
Donne, and some of their followers in England. The scale of the stories,
which are sometimes mere anecdotes, is so small, the room for
miscellaneous discourse in them is so scanty, and the absence of any
connecting Alinks, such as those of Margaret’s own plan, checks the
expression of personal feeling so much, that it is only occasionally that this
cast of thought can be perceived. But it is there, and its presence is an
important element in determining the question of the exact authorship of the
Heptameron itself.
It can hardly be said that, except translations from the Italian (of which
the close intercourse between France and Italy in the days of the later Valois
produced many), Margaret had many other examples before her. For such a
book as the Propos Rustiques of Noël du Fail, though published before her
death, is not likely to have exercised any influence over her; and most other
books of the kind are later than her own. One such (for, despite its bizarre
title and its distinct intention of attacking the Roman Church, Henry
Estienne’s Apologie pour Hérodote is really a collection of stories) deserves
mention, not because of its influence upon the Queen of Navarre, but
because of the Queen of Navarre’s influence upon it. Estienne is constantly
quoting the Heptameron, and though to a certain extent the inveteracy with
which the friars are attacked here must have given the book a special
attraction for him, two things may be gathered from his quotations and
attributions. The first is that the book was a very popular one; the second,
that there was no doubt among well-informed persons, of whom and in
whose company Estienne most certainly was, that the Heptameron was in
more than name the work of its supposed author.

From what went before it Margaret could, and could not, borrow
certain well-defined things. Models both Italian and French gave her the
scheme of including a large number of short and curtly, but not skimpingly,
told stories in one general framework, and of subdividing them into groups
dealing more or less with the same subject or class of subject. She had also
in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on that perennial and
somewhat facile source of laughter—the putting together of incidents and
phrases which even by those who laugh at them are regarded as indecorous.
But of this expedient she availed herself rather less than any of her
forerunners. She had further the example of a generally satirical intent; but
here, too, she was not content merely to follow, and her satire is, for the
most part, limited to the corruptions and abuses of the monastic orders. It
can hardly be said that any of the other stock subjects, lawyers, doctors,
citizens, even husbands (for she is less satirical on marriage than
encomiastic of love), are dealt with much by her. She found also in some,
but chiefly in older books of the Chartier and still earlier traditions, and
rather in Italian than in French, a certain strain of romance proper and of
adventure; but of this also she availed herself but rarely. What she did not
find in any example (unless, and then but partially, in the example of her
own servant, Bonaventure Des-périers) was first the interweaving of a great
deal not merely of formal religious exercise, but of positive religious
devotion in her work; and secondly, the infusing into it of the peculiar
Renaissance contrast, so often to be noticed, of love and death, passion and
piety, voluptuous enjoyment and sombre anticipation.
But it is now time to say a little more about the personality and work
of this lady, whose name all this time we have been using freely, and who
was indeed a very notable person quite independently of her literary work.
Nor was she in literature by any means an unnotable one, quite
independently of the collection of unfinished stories, which, after receiving
at its first posthumous publication the not particularly appropriate title of
Les Amants Fortunés, was more fortunately re-named, albeit by something
of a bull (for there is the beginning of an eighth day as well as the full
complement of the seven), the Heptameron.
Few ladies have been known in history by more and more confusing
titles than the author of the Heptameron, the confusion arising partly from
the fact that she had a niece and a great-niece of the same charming
Christian name as herself. The second Margaret de Valois (the most

appropriate name of all three, as it was theirs by family right) was the
daughter of Francis I., the patroness of Ronsard, and, somewhat late in life,
the wife of the Duke of Savoy—a marriage which, as the bride carried with
her a dowry of territory, was not popular, and brought some coarse jests on
her. Not much is said of her personal appearance after her infancy; but she
inherited her aunt’s literary tastes, if not her literary powers, and gave
Ronsard powerful support in his early days. The third was the daughter of
Henry II., the “Grosse Margot” of her brother, Henry III., the “Reine
Margot” of Dumas’ novel, the idol of Brantôme, the first wife of Henry IV.,
the beloved of Guise, La Mole, and a long succession of gallants, the rival
of her sister-in-law Mary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most
beautiful, gracious, learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her
time. This Margaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance
(for she had every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily
lived rather too long.
Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of her great-
niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a portentously
long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons’s, and by a very curious
expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face is one which can
be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in the not very attractive
portraiture of the time, and her actual attractions are attested by her
contemporaries with something more than the homage-to-order which
literary men have never failed to pay to ladies who are patronesses of
letters. Besides Margaret of Valois, she is known as Margaret of
Angoulême, from her place of birth and her father’s title; Margaret of
Alençon, from the fief of her first husband; Margaret of Navarre, of which
country, like her grand-niece, she was queen, by her second marriage with
Henry d’Albret; and even Margaret of Orleans, as belonging to the Orleans
branch of the royal house. She was not, like her nieces, Margaret of France,
as her father never reigned, and Brantôme properly denies her the title, but
others sometimes give it. When it is necessary to call her anything besides
the simple “Margaret,” Angoulême is at once the most appropriate and the
most distinctive designation. She was born on the 11th or 12th of April
1492, her father being Charles, Count of Angoulême, and her mother
Louise of Savoy. She was their eldest child, and two years older than her
brother, the future King Francis. According to, and even in excess of, the
custom of the age, she received a very learned education, acquiring not

merely the three tongues, French, Italian, and Spanish, which were all in
common use at the French Court during her time, but Latin, and even a little
Greek and a little Hebrew. She lived in the provinces both before and after
her marriage, in 1509, to her relation, Charles, Duke of Alençon, who was
older than herself by three years, and though a fair soldier and an
inoffensive person, was apparently of little talents and not particularly
amiable. The accession of her brother to the throne opened a much more
brilliant career to her. She and her mother jointly exercised great influence
over Francis; and the Duchess of Alençon, to whom her brother shortly
afterwards gave Berry, was for many years one of the most influential
persons in the kingdom, using her influence almost invariably for good. Her
husband died soon after Pavia, and in the same year (September 1525) she
undertook a journey to Spain on behalf of her captive brother. This journey,
with some expressions in her letters and in Brantôme, has been wrested by
some critics in order to prove that her affection for Francis was warmer than
it ought to have been—an imputation wanton in both senses of the word.
She was sought in marriage by or offered in marriage to divers
distinguished persons during her widowhood, and this was also the time of
her principal diplomatic exercise, an office for which—odd as it now seems
for a woman—she had, like her mother, like her niece Catherine of Medicis,
like her namesake Margaret of Parma, and like other ladies of the age, a
very considerable aptitude and reputation. When she at last married, the
match was not a brilliant one, though it proved, contrary to immediate
probability, to be the source of the last and the most glorious branch of the
royal dynasty of France. The bridegroom bore indeed the title of King of
Navarre and possessed Beam, but his kingdom had long been in Spanish
hands, and but for his wife’s dowry of Alençon and appanage of Berry (to
which Francis had added Armagnac and a large pension) he would have
been but a lackland. Furthermore, he was eleven years younger than herself,
and it is at least insinuated that the affection, if there was any, was chiefly
on her side. At any rate, this earlier Henry of Navarre seems to have had not
a few of the characteristics of his grandson, together with a violence and
brutality which, to do the Vert Galant justice, formed no part of his
character. The only son of the marriage died young, and a girl, Jane
d’Albret, mother of the great Bourbon race of the next two centuries, was
taken away from her parents by “reasons of state” for a time. The domestic
life of Margaret, however, concerns us but little, except in one way. Her

husband disliked administration, and she was the principal ruler in their
rather extensive estates or dominions. Moreover, she was able at her quasi-
Court to extend the literary coteries which she had already begun to form at
Paris. The patronage to men of letters for which her brother is famous was
certainly more due to her than to himself; and to her also was due the partial
toleration of religious liberty which for a time distinguished his reign. It
was not till her influence was weakened that intolerance prevailed, and she
was able even then for a time to save Marot and other distinguished persons
from persecution. It is rather a moot-point how far she inclined to the
Reformed doctrines, properly so called. Her letters, her serious and poetical
work, and even the Heptameron itself, show a fervently pietistic spirit, and
occasionally seem to testify to a distinct inclination towards Protestantism,
which is also positively attested by Brantôme and others; but this
Protestantism must have been, so far as it was consistent and definite at all,
the Protestantism of Erasmus rather than of Luther, of Rabelais rather than
of Calvin. She had a very strong objection to the coarseness, the vices, the
idleness, the brutish ignorance of the cloister; she had aspirations after a
more spiritual form of religion than the ordinary Catholicism of her day
provided, and as a strong politician she may have had something of that
Gallicanism which has always been well marked in some of the best
Frenchmen, and which at one time nearly prevailed with her great-great-
grandson, Louis XIV. But there is no doubt that, as her brother said to the
fanatical Montmorency, she would always have been and always was of his
religion, the religion of the State. The side of the Reformation which must
have most appealed to her was neither its austere morals, nor its bare ritual,
nor its doctrines, properly so called, but its spiritual pietism and its
connection with profane learning and letters; for of literature Margaret was
an ardent devotee and a constant practitioner.
Her best days were done by the time of her second marriage. After the
King’s return from Spain persecution broke out, and Margaret’s influence
became more and more weak to stop it. As early as 1533 her own Miroir de
l’Ame Pécheresse, then in a second edition, provoked the fanaticism of the
Sorbonne, and the King had to interfere in person to protect his sister’s
work and herself from gross insult. The Medici marriage increased the
persecuting tendency, and for a time there was even an attempt to suppress
printing, and with it all that new literature which was the Queen’s delight.
She was herself in some danger, but Francis had not sunk so low as to

permit any actual attack to be made on her. Yet all the last years of her life
were unhappy, though she continued to keep Court at Nérac in Pau, to
accompany her brother in his progresses, and, as we know from documents,
to play Lady Bountiful over a wide area of France. Her husband appears to
have been rather at variance with her; and her daughter, who married first,
and in name only, the Duke of Cleves in 1540, and later (1548) Anthony de
Bourbon, was also not on cordial terms with her mother. By the date of this
second marriage Francis was dead, and though he had for many years been
anything but wholly kind, Margaret’s good days were now in truth done.
Her nephew Henry left her in possession of her revenues, but does not seem
to have been very affectionately disposed towards her; and even had she
been inclined to attempt any recovery of influence, his wife and his
mistress, Catherine de Medici and Diana of Poitiers, two women as
different from Margaret as they were from one another, would certainly
have prevented her from obtaining it. As a matter of fact, however, she had
long been in ill-health, and her brother’s death seems to have dealt her the
final stroke. She survived it two years, even as she had been born two years
before him, and died on the 21 st December 1549, at the Castle of Odos,
near Tarbes, having lived in almost complete retirement for a considerable
time. Her husband is said to have regretted her dead more than he loved her
living, and her literary admirers, such of them as death and exile had
spared, were not ungrateful. Tombeaux, or collections of funeral verses,
were not lacking, the first being in Latin, and, oddly enough, nominally by
three English sisters, Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, nieces of Henry
VIII.‘s queen and Edward VI.‘s mother, with learned persons like Dorât,
Sainte-Marthe, and Baïf. This was re-issued in French and in a fuller form
later.
Some reference has been made to an atrocious slur cast without a shred
of evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation for more
general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that she had little love
for her first husband, and it seems to be probable that her second had not
much love for her. She was certainly addressed in gallant strains by men of
letters, the most audacious being Clement Marot; but the almost universal
reference of the well-known and delightful lines beginning—
“Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire,”

to her method of dealing not merely with this lover but with others,
argues a general confidence in her being a virtuous coquette, if somewhat
coquettishly virtuous. It may be added that the whole tone of the
Heptameron points to a very similar conclusion.
Her literary work was very considerable, and it falls under three
divisions: letters, the book before us, and the very curious and interesting
collection of poems known by the charming if fantastic title of Les
Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, a play on the meanings, daisy,
pearl, and Margaret, which had been popular in the artificial school of
French poetry since the end of the thirteenth century in a vast number of
forms.
The letters are naturally of the very first importance for determining
the character of Margaret’s life as a woman of business, a diplomatist, and
so forth. They show her to us in all these capacities, and also in that of an
enlightened and always ready patroness of letters and of men of letters.
Further, they are of value, though their value is somewhat affected by a
reservation to be made immediately, as to her mental and moral
characteristics. But they are not of literary interest at all equal to that of
either of the other divisions. They are, if not spoilt, still not improved, by
the fact that the art of easy letter-writing, in which Frenchwomen of the
next century were to show themselves such proficients, had not yet been
developed, and that most of them are couched in a heavy, laborious,
semiofficial style, which smells, as far as mere style goes, of the cumbrous
refinements of the rhétoriqueurs, in whose flourishing time Margaret
herself grew up, and which conceals the writer’s sentiments under elaborate
forms of ceremonial courtesy. Something at least of the groundless scandal
before referred to is derived in all probability, if not in all certainty, from the
lavish use of hyperbole in addressing her brother; and generally speaking,
the rebuke of the Queen to Polonius, “More matter with less art,” is
applicable to the whole correspondence.
Something of the same evil influence is shown in the Marguerites. It
must be remembered that the writer died before the Pléiade movement had
been fully started, and that she was older by five years than Marot, the only
one of her own contemporaries and her own literary circle who attained to a
poetic style easier, freer, and more genuine than the cumbrous rhetoric,
partly derived from the allegorising style of the Roman de la Rose and its

followers, partly influenced by corrupt following of the re-discovered and
scarcely yet understood classics, partly alloyed with Flemish and German
and Spanish stiffness, of which Chastellain, Crétin, and the rest have been
the frequently quoted and the rarely read exponents to students of French
literature. The contents of the Marguerites, to take the order of the beautiful
edition of M. Félix Frank, are as follows: Volume I. contains first a long and
singular religious poem entitled Le Miroir de l’Ame Pécheresse, in rhymed
decasyllables, in which pretty literal paraphrases of a large number of
passages of Scripture are strung together with a certain amount of pious
comment and reflection. This is followed (after a shorter piece on the
contest in the human soul between the laws of the spirit and of the flesh) by
another poem of about the same length as the Miroir, and of no very
different character, entitled Oraison de L’Ame Fidèle à son Seigneur Dieu,
and a shorter Oraison à Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ completes the volume.
The second volume yields four so-called “comedies,” but really mysteries
on the old mediæval model, only distinguishable from their forerunners by
slightly more modern language and a more scriptural tone. The subjects are
the Nativity, the Adoration of the Three Kings, the Massacre of the
Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt. The third volume contains a third
poem in the style of the Miroir, but much superior, Le Triomphe de
l’Agneau, a considerable body of spiritual songs, a miscellaneous poem or
two, and some epistles, chiefly addressed to Francis. These last begin the
smaller and secular division of the Marguerites, which is completed in the
fourth volume by Les Quatre Dames et les Quatre Gentilhommes,
composed of long monologues after the fashion of the Froissart-Chartier
school, by a “comédie profane,” a farce entitled Trop, Prou [much], Peu,
Moins; a long love poem, again in the Chartier style, entitled La Coche, and
some minor pieces.
Opinion as to these poems has varied somewhat, but their merit has
never been put very high, nor, to tell the truth, could it be put high by any
one who speaks critically. In the first place, they are written for the most
part on very bad models, both in general plan and in particular style and
expression. The plan is, as has been said, taken from the long-winded
allegorical erotic poetry of the very late thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the
fifteenth centuries—poetry which is now among the most difficult to read in
any literature. The groundwork or canvas being transferred from love to
religion, it gains a little in freshness and directness of purpose, but hardly in

general readableness. Thus, for instance, two whole pages of the Miroir, or
some forty or fifty lines, are taken up with endless playings on the words
mort and vie and their derivatives, such as mortifiez, and mort fiez, mort
vivifiée and vie mourante. The sacred comedies or mysteries have the
tediousness and lack of action of the older pieces of the same kind without
their naïveté; and pretty much the same may be said of the profane comedy
(which is a kind of morality), and of the farce. Of La Coche, what has been
said of the long sacred poems may be said, except that here we go back to
the actual subject of the models, not on the whole with advantage: while in
the minor pieces the same word plays and frigid conceits are observable.
But if this somewhat severe judgment must be passed on the poems as
wholes, and from a certain point of view, it may be considerably softened
when they are considered more in detail. In not a few passages of the
religious poems Margaret has reached (and as she had no examples before
her except Marot’s psalms, which were themselves later than at least some
of her work, may be said to have anticipated) that grave and solemn
harmony of the French Huguenots of the sixteenth century, which in Du
Bartas, in Agrippa d’Aubigné, and in passages of the tragedian
Montchrestien, strikes notes hardly touched elsewhere in French literature.
The Triomphe de l’Agneau displays her at her best in this respect, and not
unfrequently comes not too far off from the apocalyptic resonance of
d’Aubigné himself. Again, the Bergerie included in the Nativity comedy or
mystery, though something of a Dresden Bergerie (to use a later image), is
graceful and elegant enough in all conscience. But it is on the minor poems,
especially the Epistles and the Chansons Spirituelles, that the defenders of
Margaret’s claim to be a poet rest most strongly. In the former her love, not
merely for her brother, but for her husband, appears unmistakably, and
suggests graceful thoughts. In the latter the force and fire which
occasionally break through the stiff wrappings of the longer poems appear
with less difficulty and in fuller measure.
It is, however, undoubtedly curious, and not to be explained merely by
the difference of subject, that the styles of the letters and of the poems,
agreeing well enough between themselves, differ most remarkably from that
of the Heptameron. The two former are decidedly open to the charges of
pedantry, artificiality, heaviness. There is a great surplusage of words and a
seeming inability to get to the point. The Heptameron if not equal in
narrative vigour and lightness to Boccaccio before and La Fontaine

afterwards, is not in the least exposed to the charge of clumsiness of any
kind, employs a simple, natural, and sufficiently picturesque vocabulary,
avoids all verbiage and roundabout writing, and both in the narratives and
in the connecting conversation displays a very considerable advance upon
nearly all the writers of the time, except Rabelais, Marot, and Despériers, in
easy command of the vernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there
has, at different times (rather less of late years, but that is probably an
accident), been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit
of the book, at any rate to give a share of it to others. In so far as this share
is attempted to be bestowed on ladies and gentlemen of her Court or family
there is very little evidence for it; but in so far as the pen may be thought to
have been sometimes held for her by the distinguished men of letters just
referred to (there is no reason why Master Francis himself should not have
sometimes guided it), and by others only less distinguished, there is
considerable internal reason to favour the idea. At all times and in all places
—in France perhaps more than anywhere else—kings and queens, lords and
ladies, have found no difficulty (we need not use the harsh Voltairian-
Carlylian phrase, and say in getting their literary work “buckwashed,” but)
in getting it pointed and seasoned, trimmed and ornamented by professional
men of letters. The form of the Heptameron lends itself more than any other
to such assistance; and while I should imagine that the setting, with its
strong colour, both of religiosity and amorousness, is almost wholly
Margaret’s work, I should also think it so likely as to be nearly certain that
in some at least of the tales the hands of the authors of the Cymbalum
Mundi and the Adolescence Clémentine, of Le Maçon and Brodeau, may
have worked at the devising, very likely re-shaped and adjusted by the
Queen herself, of the actual stories as we have them now.
The book, as we have it, consists of seven complete days of ten novels
each, and of an eighth containing two novels only. The fictitious scheme of
the setting is somewhat less lugubrious than that of the Decameron, but still
not without an element of tragedy. On the first of September, “when the hot
springs of the Pyrenees begin to enter upon their virtue,” a company of
persons of quality assembled at Cauterets, we are told, and abode there
three weeks with much profit. But when they tried to return, rain set in with
such severity that they thought the Deluge had come again, and they found
their roads, especially that to the French side, almost entirely barred by the
Gave de Béarn and other rivers. So they scattered in different directions,

most of them taking the Spanish side, either along the mountains and across
to Roussillon or straight to Barcelona, and thence home by sea. But a
certain widow, named Oisille, made her way with much loss of men and
horses to the Abbey of Notre Dame de Serrance. Here she was joined by
divers gentlemen and ladies, who had had even worse experiences of travel
than herself, with bears and brigands, and other evil things, so that one of
them, Longarine, had lost her husband, murdered in an affray in one of the
cut-throat inns always dear to romance. Besides this disconsolate person
and Oisille, the company consisted of a married pair, Hircan and
Parlamente; two young cavaliers, Dagoucin and Saffredent; two young
ladies, Nomerfide and Ennasuite; Simontault, a cavalier-servant of
Parlamente; and Geburon, a knight older and discreeter than the rest of the
company except Oisille.(1)

1 These names have been accommodated to M. Le Roux de
Lincy’s orthography, from MS. No. 1512; but for myself I
prefer the spellings, especially “Emarsuitte,” more usual in
the printed editions.—G. S.

These form the party, and it is to be noted that idle and contradictory as
all the attempts made to identify them have been (for instance, the most
confident interpreters hesitate between Oisille and Parlamente, an aged
widow and a youthful wife, for Margaret herself), it is not to be denied that
the various parts are kept up with much decision and spirit. Of the men,
indeed, Hircan is the only one who has a very decided character, and is
represented as fond of his wife, Parlamente, but a decided libertine and of a
somewhat rough and ruthless general character—points which have made
the interpreters sure that he must be Henry d’Albret. The others, except that
Geburon is, as had been said, older than his companions, and that
Simontault sighs vainly after Parlamente, are merely walking gentlemen of
the time, accomplished enough, but not individual. The women are much
more distinct and show a woman’s hand. Oisille is, as our own seventeenth-
century ancestors would have said, ancient and sober, very devout, regarded
with great respect by the rest of the company, and accepted as a kind of
mistress both of the revels and of more serious matters, but still a woman of
the world, and content to make only an occasional and mild protest against
tolerably free stories and sentiments. Parlamente, considerably younger, and
though virtuous, not by any means ignorant of or wholly averse to the

devotion of Simontault, indulging occasionally in a kind of mild conjugal
sparring with her husband, Hircan, but apparently devoted to him, full of
religion and romance and refinement at once, is a very charming character,
resembling Madame de Sévigné as she may have been in her unknown or
hardly known youth, when husband and lovers alike were attracted by the
flame of her beauty and charm, only to complain that it froze and did not
burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for her dead husband, but appears
decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughty damsel, disdainful of poor
folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap, a Catherine Seyton of the generation
before Catherine herself, the feminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too
free-spoken for prudish modern taste, a very delightful girl.
Now when this good company had assembled at Serrance and told
each other their misadventures, the waters on inquiry seemed to be out more
widely and more dangerously than before, so that it was impossible to think
of going farther for the time. They deliberated accordingly how they should
employ themselves, and, after allowing, on the proposal of Oisille, an ample
space for sacred exercises, they resolved that every day, after dinner and an
interval, they should assemble in a meadow on the bank of the Gave at
midday and tell stories. The device is carried out with such success that the
monks steal behind the hedges to hear them, and an occasional
postponement of vespers takes place. Simontault begins, and the system of
tale-telling goes round on the usual plan of each speaker naming him or her
who shall follow. It should be observed that no general subject is, as in the
Decameron, prescribed to the speakers of each day, though, as a matter of
course, one subject often suggests another of not dissimilar kind. Nor is
there the Decameronic arrangement of the “king.” Between the stories, and
also between the days, there is often a good deal of conversation, in which
the divers characters, as given above, are carried out with a minuteness very
different from the chief Italian original.
From what has been said already, it will be readily perceived that the
novels, or rather their subjects, are not very easy to class in any rationalised
order. The great majority, if they do not answer exactly to the old title of
Les Histoires des Amants Fortunés, are devoted to the eternal subject of the
tricks played by wives to the disadvantage of husbands, by husbands to the
disadvantage of wives, and sometimes by lovers to the disadvantage of
both. “Subtilité” is a frequent word in the titles, and it corresponds to a real
thing. Another large division, trenching somewhat upon the first, is

composed of stories to the discredit of the monks (something, though less,
is said against the secular clergy), and especially of the Cordeliers or
Franciscans, an Order who, for their coarse immorality and their brutal
antipathy to learning, were the special black (or rather grey) beasts of the
literary reformers of the time. In a considerable number there are references
to actual personages of the time—references which stand on a very different
footing of identification from the puerile guessings at the personality of the
interlocutors so often referred to. Sometimes these references are avowed:
“Un des muletiers de la Reine de Navarre,” “Le Roi François montre sa
générosité,” “Un Président de Grenoble,” “Une femme d’Alençon,” and so
forth. At other times the reference is somewhat more covert, but hardly to
be doubted, as in the remarkable story of a “great Prince” (obviously
Francis himself) who used on his journeyings to and from an assignation of
a very illegitimate character, to turn into a church and piously pursue his
devotions. There are a few curious stories in which amatory matters play
only a subordinate part or none at all, though it must be confessed that this
last is a rare thing. Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes
pretty free, and then generally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such
as that already noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal with
remarkable trials and crimes, or merely miscellaneous matters, the best of
the last class being the capital “Bonne invention pour chasser le lutin.”
In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, it
naturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversity of
tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once, the
combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and a mystical
devotion, is seldom absent for long together. The general note, indeed, of
the Heptameron is given by more than one passage in Brantôme—at
greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightly quoted, at the same
time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbé’s determination to see in it
little more than a piece of précieuse mannerliness (though, indeed, the
Précieuses were not yet). Yet even Sainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out
quite strongly enough how entirely this is the keynote of all Margaret’s
work, and especially of the Heptameron. The story therefore may be worth
telling again, though it may be found in the “Cinquième Discours” of the
Vies des Dames Galantes.
Brantôme’s brother, not yet a captain in the army, but a student
travelling in Italy, had in sojourning at Ferrara, when Renée of France was

Duchess, fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle de la Roche. For love
of him she had returned to France, and, visiting his own country of
Gascony, had attached herself to the Court of Margaret, where she had died.
And it happened that Bourdeilles, six months afterwards, and having
forgotten all about his dead love, came to Pau and went to pay his respects
to the Queen. He met her coming back from vespers, and she greeted him
graciously, and they talked of this matter and of that. But, as they walked
together hither and thither, the Queen drew him, without cause shown, into
the church she had just left, where Mademoiselle de la Roche was buried.
“Cousin,” said she, “do you feel nothing stirring beneath you and under
your feet?” But he said, “Nothing, Madame.” “Think, cousin,” then said she
once again. But he said, “Madame, I have thought well, but I feel nought;
for under me there is but a stone, hard and firmly set.” “Now, do I tell you,”
said the Queen, leaving him no longer at study, “that you are above the
tomb and the body of Mademoiselle de la Roche, who is buried beneath
you, and whom you loved so much in her lifetime. And since our souls have
sense after our death, it cannot be but that this faithful one, dead so lately,
felt your presence as soon as you came near her; and if you have not
perceived it, because of the thickness of the tomb, doubt not that none the
less she felt it. And forasmuch as it is a pious work to make memory of the
dead, and notably of those whom we loved, I pray you give her a pater and
an ave, and likewise a de profundis, and pour out holy water. So shall you
make acquist of the name of a right faithful lover and a good Christian.”
And she left him that he might do this.
Brantôme (though he had an admiration for Margaret, whose lady of
honour his grandmother had been, and who, according to the Bourdeilles
tradition, composed her novels in travelling) thought this a pretty fashion of
converse. “Voilà,” he says, “l’opinion de cette bonne princesse; laquelle la
tenait plus par gentillesse et par forme de devis que par créance à mon
avis.” Sainte-Beuve, on the contrary, and with better reason, sees in it faith,
graciousness, feminine delicacy, and piety at once. No doubt; but there is
something more than this, and that something more is what we are in search
of, and what we shall find, now in one way, now in another, throughout the
book: something whereof the sentiment of Donne’s famous thoughts on the
old lover’s ghost, on the blanched bone with its circlet of golden tresses, is
the best known instance in English. The madcap Nomerfide indeed lays it
down, that “the meditation of death cools the heart not a little.” But her

more experienced companions know better. The worse side of this
Renaissance peculiarity is told in the last tale, a rather ghastly story of
monkish corruption; its lighter side appears in the story, already referred to,
of the “Grand Prince” and his pious devotions on the way to not particularly
pious occupation. But touches of the more poetical and romantic effects of
it are all over the book. It is to be found in the story of the gentleman who
forsook the world because of his beloved’s cruelty, whereat she repenting
did likewise (“he had much better have thrown away his cowl and married
her,” quoth the practical Nomerfide); in that of the wife who, to obtain
freedom of living with her paramour, actually allowed herself to be buried;
in that (very characteristic of the time, especially for the touch of farce in it)
of the unlucky person to whom phlebotomy and love together were fatal;
and in not a few others, while it emerges in casual phrases of the
intermediate conversations and of the stories themselves, even when it is
not to be detected in the general character of the subjects.
And thus we can pretty well decide what is the most interesting and
important part of the whole subject. The question, What is the special virtue
of the Heptameron? I have myself little hesitation in answering. There is no
book, in prose and of so early a date, which shows to me the characteristic
of the time as it influenced the two great literary nations of Europe so
distinctly as this book of Margaret of Angoulême. Take it as a book of Court
gossip, and it is rather less interesting than most books of Court gossip,
which is saying much. Take it as the performance of a single person, and
you are confronted with the difficulty that it is quite unlike that other
person’s more certain works, and that it is in all probability a joint affair.
Take its separate stories, and, with rare exceptions, they are not of the first
order of interest, or even of the second. But separate the individual purport
of these stories from the general colour or tone of them; take this general
colour or tone in connection with the tenor of the intermediate
conversations, which form so striking a characteristic of the book, and
something quite different appears. It is that same peculiarity which appears
in places and persons and things so different as Spenser, as the poetry of the
Pléiade, as Montaigne, as Raleigh, as Donne, as the group of singers known
as the Caroline poets. It is a peculiarity which has shown itself in different
forms at different times, but never in such vigour and precision as at this
time. It combines a profound and certainly sincere—almost severe—
religiosity with a very vigorous practice of some things which the religion it

professes does not at all countenance. It has an almost morbidly pronounced
simultaneous sense of the joys and the sorrows of human life, the
enjoyment of the joys being perfectly frank, and the feeling of the sorrows
not in the least sentimental. It unites a great general refinement of thought,
manners, opinion, with an almost astonishing occasional coarseness of
opinion, manners, thought. The prevailing note in it is a profound
melancholy mixed with flashes and intervals of a no less profound delight.
There is in it the sense of death, to a strange and, at first sight, almost
unintelligible extent. Only when one remembers the long night of the
religious wars which was just about to fall on France, just as after Spenser,
Puritan as he was, after Carew and Herrick still more, a night of a similar
character was about to fall on England, does the real reason of this singular
idiosyncrasy appear. The company of the Heptameron are the latest
representatives, at first hand, and with no deliberate purpose of
presentment, of the mediaeval conception of gentlemen and ladies who
fleeted the time goldenly. They are not themselves any longer mediaeval;
they have been taught modern ways; they have a kind of uneasy sense (even
though one and another of themselves may now and then flout the idea) of
the importance of other classes, even of some duty on their own part
towards other classes. Their piety is a very little deliberate, their voluptuous
indulgence has a grain of conscience in it and behind it, which distinguishes
it not less from the frank indulgence of a Greek or a Roman than from the
still franker naïveté of purely mediaeval art, from the childlike, almost
paradisiac, innocence of the Belli-cents and Nicolettes and of the daughter
of the great Soldan Hugh in that wonderful serio-comic chanson of the
Voyage à Constantinople. The mark of modernity is on them, and yet they
are so little conscious of it, and so perfectly free from even the slightest
touch of at least its anti-religious influence. Nobody, not even Hircan, the
Grammont of the sixteenth century; not even Nomerfide, the Miss Notable
of her day and society; not even the haughty lady Ennasuite, who wonders
whether common folk can be supposed to have like passions with us, feels
the abundant religious services and the periods of meditation
unconscionable or tiresome.
And so we have here three notes constantly sounding together or in
immediate sequence. There is the passion of that exquisite rondeau of
Marot’s, which some will have, perhaps not impossibly, to refer to Margaret
herself—

En la baisant m’a dit: “Amy sans blasme,
Ce seul baiser, qui deux bouches embasme,
Les arrhes sont du bien tant espéré,”
Ce mot elle a doulcement proféré,
Pensant du tout apaiser ma grand flamme.
Mais le mien cour adonc plus elle enflamme,
Car son alaine odorant plus que basme
Souffloit le feu qu’Amour m’a préparé,
En la baisant.

Bref, mon esprit, sans congnoissance d’âme,
Vivoit alors sur la bouche à ma dame,
Dont se mouroit le corps énamouré;
Et si la lèvre eust guères demouré
Contre la mienne, elle m’eust succé l’âme,
En la baisant.

There is the devout meditation of Oisille, and that familiarity with the
Scriptures which, as Hircan himself says, “I trow we all read and know.”
And then there is the note given by two other curious stories of Brantôme.
One tells how the Queen of Navarre watched earnestly for hours by the
bedside of a dying maid of honour, that she might see whether the parting
of the soul was a visible fact or not. The second tells how when some talked
before her of the joys of heaven, she sighed and said, “Well, I know that this
is true; but we dwell so long dead underground before we arise thither.”
There, in a few words, is the secret of THE HEPTAMERON: the fear of
God, the sense of death, the voluptuous longing and voluptuous regret for
the good things of life and love that pass away.
George Saintsbury.(1)
London, October 1892.

1 As I have spoken so strongly of the attempts to identify
the personages of the Heptameron, it might seem
discourteous not to mention that one of the most
enthusiastic and erudite English students of Margaret,
Madame Darmesteter (Miss Mary Robinson), appears to be
convinced of the possibility and advisableness of
discovering these originals. Everything that this lady
writes is most agreeable to read; but I fear I cannot say
that her arguments have converted me.—G. S.

DEDICATIONS AND PREFACE,
PREFIXED TO THE FIRST TWO EDITIONS OF THE
TALES OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE.

To the most Illustrious, most Humble, and most Excellent Princess,
Madame Margaret de Bourbon,
Duchess of Nevers, Marchioness of Illes, Countess of Eu, of Dreux,
Rételois, Columbiers, and Beaufort, Lady of Aspremont, of Cham-
Regnault, of Arches, Rencaurt, Monrond, and La Chapelle-d’Angylon,
Peter Boaistuau surnamed Launay, offers most humble salutation and
perpetual obedience.(1)

1 This dedicatory preface appeared in the first edition of
Queen Margaret’s Tales, published by Boaistuau in 1558 under
the title of Histoires des Amans Fortunez. The Princess
addressed was the daughter of Charles, Duke of Vendôme; she
was wedded in 1538 to Francis of Cleves, Duke of Nevers, and
by this marriage became niece to the Queen of Navarre.—Ed.

Madam, That great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores with
infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity of
his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of illustrious
persons cut off from among mankind, but, what is more, their writings, by
which the rich conceptions of their souls and the divine ornaments of their
minds were to have been consecrated to posterity, did not survive them.
And certainly with most manifest reason did this good and holy man
address such a complaint to the whole Christian Republic, touched as he
was with just grief for an infinity of thousands of books, of which some
have been lost and buried in eternal forgetfulness by the negligence of men,
others dispersed and destroyed by the cruel incursions of war, others rotted
and spoiled as much by the rigour of time as by carelessness to collect and
preserve them; whereof the ancient Histories and Annals furnish a sufficient
example in the memorable library of that great King of Egypt, Ptolemy
Phila-delphus, which had been formed with the sweat and blood of so many

notable philosophers, and maintained, ordered, and preserved by the
liberality of that great monarch. And yet in less than a day, by the
monstrous and abominable cruelty of the soldiers of Cæsar, when the latter
followed Pompey to Alexandria, it was burned and reduced to ashes.
Zonarius, the ecclesiastical historian, writes that the same happened at
Constantinople in the time of Zeno, when a superb and magnificent palace,
adorned with all sorts of manuscript books, was burnt, to the eternal regret
and insupportable detriment of all those who made a profession of letters.
And without amusing ourselves too curiously in recounting the destruction
among the ancients, we have in our time experienced a similar loss—of
which the memory is so recent that the wounds thereof still bleed in all
parts of Europe—namely, when the Turks besieged Buda, the capital of
Hungary, where the most celebrated library of the good King Matthias was
pillaged, dispersed, and destroyed; a library which, without sparing any
expense, he had enriched with all the rarest and most excellent books,
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, that he had been able to collect in all the
most famous provinces of the earth.
Again, he who would particularise and closely examine things will
find that Theophrastes, as he himself declares, wrote and composed three
hundred volumes, Chrysippus sixty, Empedocles fifty, Servus Sulpicius two
hundred on civil law, Gallienus one hundred and thirty on the art of
medicine, and Origenes six thousand, all of which St. Jerome attests having
read; and yet, of so many admirable and excellent authors, there now
remain to us only some little fragments, so debased and vitiated in several
places, that they seem abortive, and as if they had been torn from their
author’s hands by force.
On account of which, my Lady, since the occasion has offered, I have
been minded to present all these examples, with the object of exhorting all
those who treasure books and keep them sequestered in their sanctuaries
and cabinets, to henceforth publish them and bring them to light, not only
so that they may not keep back and bury the glory of their ancestors, but
also that they may not deprive their descendants of the profit and pleasure
which they might derive from the labour of others.
In regard to myself, I will set forth more amply in the notice which I
will give to the reader the motive that induced me to put my hand to the
work of the present author, who has no need of trumpet and herald to exalt

and magnify her(1) greatness, inasmuch as there is no human eloquence
that could portray her more forcibly than she has portrayed herself by the
celestial strokes of her own brush; I mean by her other writings, in which
she has so well expressed the sincerity of her doctrines, the vivacity of her
faith, and the uprightness of her morals, that the most learned men who
reigned in her time were not ashamed to call her a prodigy and miracle of
nature. And albeit that Heaven, jealous of our welfare, has snatched her
from this mortal habitation, yet her virtues rendered her so admirable and so
engraved her in the memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time
cannot efface her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her,
like Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad
verses and delicate elegies which describe and reveal, her virtues and
merits.

1 In the French text Boaistuau invariably refers to the
author as a personage of the masculine sex, with the evident
object of concealing the real authorship of the work.
Feminine pronouns have, however, been substituted in the
translation, as it is Queen Margaret who is referred to.
—Ed.

Therefore, my Lady, as this work is about to be exposed to the
doubtful judgment of so many thousands of men, may it please you to take
it under your protection and into your safe keeping; for, whereas you are the
natural and legitimate heiress of all the excellencies, ornaments, and virtues
which enriched the author while she adorned by her presence the surprise of
the earth, and which now by some marvellous ray of divinity live and
display themselves in you, it is not possible that you should be defrauded of
the fruit of the labour which justly belongs to you, and for which the whole
universe will be indebted to you now that it comes forth into the light under
the resplendent shelter of your divine and heroic virtues.
May it therefore please you, my Lady, to graciously accept of this little
offering, as an eternal proof of my obedience and most humble devotion to
your greatness, pending a more important sacrifice which I prepare for the
future.

Peter Boaistuau, surnamed Launay, To the
Reader.(1)

1 This notice follows the dedicatory preface in the edition
of 1558.

Gentle Reader, I can tell thee verily and with good right assert (even
prove by witnesses worthy of belief) when this work was presented to me
that I might fulfil the office of a sponge and cleanse it of a multitude of
manifest errors that were found in a copy written by hand, I was only
requested to take out or copy eighteen or twenty of the more notable tales,
reserving myself to complete the rest at a more convenient season and at
greater leisure.
However, as men are fond of novelties, I was solicited with very
pressing requests to pursue my point, to which I consented, rather by reason
of the importunity than of my own will, and my enterprise was conducted in
such fashion, that so as not to show myself in any wise disobedient, I added
some more tales, to which again others have since been adjoined.
In regard to myself, I can assure thee that it would have been less
difficult for me to build the whole edifice anew than to mutilate it in several
places, change, innovate, add and suppress in others, but I was almost
perforce compelled to give it a new form, which I have done, partly for the
requirements and the adornment of the stories, partly to conform to the
times and the infelicity of our century, when most human things are so
exulcerated that there is no work, however well digested, polished, and
filed, but it is badly interpreted and slandered by the malice of fastidious
persons. Take, therefore, in good part our hasty labour, and be not too close
a censor of another’s work until thou hast examined thine own.

To the most Illustrious and Virtuous Princess,
Madame Jane de Foix,
Queen of Navarre,
Claud Gruget, her very humble servant, presents salutation and wishes
of felicity. (1)
I would not have interfered, Madam, to present you with this book of
the Tales of the late Queen, your mother, if the first edition had not omitted
or concealed her name, and almost entirely changed its form, to such a point
that many did not recognise it; on which account, to render it worthy of its
author, I, as soon as it was divulged, gathered together from all sides the
copies I could collect of it written by hand, verifying them by my copy, and
acting in such wise that I arranged the book in the real order in which she
had drawn it up. Then, with the permission of the King and your consent, it
was sent to the press to be published such as it should be.
Concerning it, I am reminded of what Count Balthazar says of
Boccaccio in the Preface to his Courtier(2) that what he had done by way of
pastime, namely, his Decameron, had brought him more honour than all his
other works in Latin or Tuscan, which he esteemed the most serious.

1 This preface was inserted in the edition issued in 1559
by Claud Gruget, who gave the title of “Heptameron” to
Queen Margaret’s tales.

2 The Libro del Cortegiano, by Count Baldassare
Castiglione, was the nobleman’s vade-mecum of the period.
First published at Venice in 1528, it was translated into
French in 1537 by J. Colin, secretary to Francis I.—Ed.

Thus, the Queen, that true ornament of our century, from whom you do
not derogate in the love and knowledge of good letters, while amusing
herself with the acts of human life, has left such beauteous instructions that
there is no one who does not find matter of erudition in them; and, indeed,
according to all good judgment, she has surpassed Boccaccio in the
beautiful Discourses which she composes upon each of her tales. For which

she deserves praise, not only over the most excellent ladies, but also among
the most learned men; for of the three styles of oration described by Cicero,
she has chosen the simple one, similar to that of Terence in Latin, which to
every one seems very easy to imitate, though it is anything but that to him
who tries it.
It is true that such a present will not be new to you, and that you will
only recognise in it the maternal inheritance. However, I feel assured that
you will receive it favourably, at seeing it, in this second impression,
restored to its original state, for according to what I have heard the first
displeased you. Not that he who put his hand to it was not a learned man, or
did not take trouble; indeed it is easy to believe that he was not minded to
disguise it thus, without some reason; nevertheless his work has proved
unpleasing.
I present it to you then, Madam, not that I pretend to any share in it,
but only as having unmasked it to restore it to you in its natural state. It is
for Your Royal Greatness to favour it since it proceeds from your illustrious
House, whereof it bears the mark upon the front, which will serve it as a
safe-conduct throughout the world and render it welcome among good
company.
As for myself, recognising the honour that you will do me in receiving
from my hand the work thus restored to its right state, I shall ever feel
obliged to render you most humble duty.

THE HEPTAMERON.

[Prologue: The Story-tellers in the Meadow near The Gave.]

PROLOGUE.
On the first day of September, when the baths in the Pyrenees
Mountains begin to be possessed of their virtue, there were at those of
Cauterets(1) many persons as well of France as of Spain, some to drink the
water, others to bathe in it, and again others to make trial of the mud; all
these being remedies so marvellous that persons despaired of by the doctors
return thence wholly cured. My purpose is not to speak to you of the
situation or virtue of the said baths, but only to set forth as much as relates
to the matter of which I desire to write.

1 There are no fewer than twenty-six sources at Cauterets,
the waters being either of a sulphureous or a saline
character. The mud baths alluded to by Margaret were
formerly taken at the Source de César Vieux, half-way up
Mount Peyraute, and so called owing to a tradition that
Julius Cæsar bathed there. It is at least certain that these
baths were known to the Romans.—Ed.

Cauterets is frequently mentioned by the old authors, and
Rabelais refers to it in this passage: “Pantagruel’s urine
was so hot that ever since that time it has not cooled, and
you have some of it in France, at divers places, at
Coderetz, Limous, Dast, Ballerue, Bourbonne, and
elsewhere”(Book ii. chap, xxxiii.).—M.

All the sick persons continued at the baths for more than three weeks,
until by the amendment in their condition they perceived that they might
return home again. But while they were preparing to do so, there fell such
extraordinary rains that it seemed as though God had forgotten the promise
He made to Noah never to destroy the world with water again; for every
cottage and every lodging in Cauterets was so flooded with water that it was
no longer possible to continue there. Those who had come from the side of
Spain returned thither across the mountains as best they could, and such of
them as knew whither the roads led fared best in making their escape.
The French lords and ladies thought to return to Tarbes as easily as
they had come, but they found the streamlets so deep as to be scarcely
fordable. When they came to pass over the Bearnese Gave,(1) which at the

time of their former passage had been less than two feet in depth, they
found it so broad and swift that they turned aside to seek for the bridges.
But these being only of wood, had been swept away by the turbulence of
the water.

1 The Basques give the name of Gave to those watercourses
which become torrents in certain seasons. The Bearnese Gave,
so named because it passes through the territory of the
ancient city of Beam, takes its source in the Pyrenees, and
flows past Pau to Sorde, where it joins the Adour, which
falls into the sea at Bayonne. It is nowadays generally
known as the Gave of Pau.—L. & M.

Then certain of the company thought to stem the force of the current
by crossing in a body, but they were quickly carried away, and the others
who had been about to follow lost all inclination to do so. Accordingly they
separated, as much because they were not all of one mind as to find some
other way. Some crossed over the mountains, and passing through Aragon
came to the county of Rousillon, and thence to Narbonne; whilst others
made straight for Barcelona, going thence by sea, some to Marseilles and
others to Aigues-Mortes.
But a widow lady of long experience, named Oisille, resolved to lay
aside all fear of bad roads and to betake herself to Our Lady of Serrance.(3)

3 The Abbey of Our Lady of Serrance, or more correctly
Sarrances, in the valley of Aspe, was occupied by monks of
the Prémontré Order, who were under the patronage of St.
Mary. An apparition of the Virgin having been reported in
the vicinity, pilgrimages were made to Sarrances on the
feasts of her nativity (Sept. 8) and her assumption (Aug.
15). In 1385 Gaston de Foix, who greatly enriched the abbey,
built a residence in the neighbourhood, his example being
followed by the Gramonts, the Miollens, and other nobles.
The pilgrimages had become very celebrated in the fifteenth
century, when Louis XI. repaired to Sarrances, accompanied
by Coictier, his physician. In 1569, however, the
Huguenots pillaged and burned down the abbey, together with
the royal and other residences. The monks who escaped the
flames were put to the sword.—M. & Ed.

She was not, indeed, so superstitious as to think that the glorious
Virgin would leave her seat at her Son’s right hand to come and dwell in a
desolate country, but she was desirous to see the hallowed spot of which she

had so often heard, and further she was sure that if there were a means of
escaping from a danger, the monks would certainly find it out. At last she
arrived, after passing through places so strange, and so difficult in the going
up and coming down, that, in spite of her years and weight, she had
perforce gone most of the way on foot But the most piteous thing was, that
the greater part of her servants and horses were left dead on the way, and
she had but one man and one woman with her on arriving at Serrance,
where she was charitably received by the monks.
There were also among the French two gentlemen who had gone to the
baths rather that they might be in the company of the ladies whose lovers
they were, than because of any failure in their health. These gentlemen,
seeing that the company was departing and that the husbands of their ladies
were taking them away, resolved to follow them at a distance without
making their design known to any one. But one evening, while the two
married gentlemen and their wives were in the house of one who was more
of a robber than a peasant, the two lovers, who were lodged in a farmhouse
hard by, heard about midnight a great uproar. They got up, together with
their serving-men, and inquired what this tumult meant. The poor man, in
great fear, told them that it was caused by certain evil-doers who were come
to share the spoil which was in the house of their fellow-bandit. Thereupon
the gentlemen immediately took their arms, and with their serving-men set
forth to succour the ladies, esteeming it a happier thing to die for them than
to outlive them.
When they reached the house, they found the first door broken
through, and the two gentlemen with their servants defending themselves
valiantly. But inasmuch as they were outnumbered by the robbers, and were
also sorely wounded, they were beginning to fall back, having already lost
many of their servants. The two gentlemen, looking in at the windows,
perceived the ladies shrieking and sobbing so bitterly that their hearts
swelled with pity and love at the sight; and, like two enraged bears coming
down from the mountains, they fell upon the bandits with such fury that
many of them were slain, while the remainder, unwilling to await their
onset, fled to a hiding-place which was known to them.
When the gentlemen had worsted these rogues and had slain the host
himself among the rest, they heard that the man’s wife was even worse than
her husband; and they therefore sent her after him with a sword-thrust. Then

they entered a lower room, where they found one of the married gentlemen
on the point of death. The other had received no hurt, save that his clothes
were all pierced with thrusts and that his sword was broken in two. The
poor gentleman, perceiving what help the two had afforded him, embraced
and thanked them, and besought them not to abandon him, which was to
them a very agreeable request. When they had buried the dead gentleman,
and had comforted his wife as well as they were able, they took the road
which God set before them, not knowing whither they were going.
If it pleases you to know the names of the three gentlemen, the married
one was called Hircan, and his wife Parlamente, the name of the widow
being Longarine; of the two lovers one was called Dagoucin and the other
Saffredent. After having been the whole day on horseback, towards evening
they descried a belfry, whither with toil and trouble they made the best of
their way, and on their arrival were kindly received by the Abbot and the
monks. The abbey is called St. Savyn.(4)

4 The Abbey of St. Savin of Tarbes, situated between Argelèz
and Pierrefitte, in what was formerly called the county of
Lavedan, is stated to have been founded by Charlemagne; and
here the Paladin Roland is said to have slain the giants
Alabaster and Passamont to recompense the monks for their
hospitality. The abbey took its name from a child (the son
of a Count of Barcelona) who led a hermit’s life, and is
accredited with having performed several miracles in the
neighbourhood. About the year 1100 the Pope, siding with the
people of the valley of Aspe in a quarrel between them and
the Abbot of St. Savin, issued a bull forbidding the women
of Lavedan to conceive for a period of seven years. The
animals, moreover, were not to bring forth young, and the
trees were not to bear fruit for a like period. The edict
remained in force for six years, when the Abbot of St. Savin
compromised matters by engaging to pay an annual tribute to
Aspe. This tribute was actually paid until the Revolution of
1789. On the other hand, the abbey was entitled to the right
shoulder of every stag, boar, and izard (the Pyrenean
chamois) killed in the valley, with other tributes of trout,
cheese, and flowers, which last the Abbot acknowledged by
kissing the prettiest maiden of Argelèz. Amongst various
privileges possessed by the monks was that of having their
beds made by the girls of the neighbourhood on certain high
days and holidays.

In the tenth century Raymond of Bigorre presented the abbey
with the valley of Cauterets on condition that a church

should be built there and “sufficient houses kept in repair
to facilitate the using of the baths.” In 1290 Edward III.
of England confirmed the monks of St. Savin in possession of
Cauterets. In 1316, when the inhabitants of the latter place
wished to change the situation of their village, the Abbot
of St. Savin consented, but a woman opposed her veto (all
women had the right of vote) and this sufficed to frustrate
the scheme. The abbey derived a considerable income from
Cauterets, the baths and the houses built there for the
accommodation of visitors being let out on lease. The leases
of 1617 and 1697 are preserved in the archives of Pau. In
the time of Queen Margaret the abbey was extremely wealthy;
the Abbot to whom she refers, according to M. Le Roux de
Lincy, was probably Raymond de Fontaine, who ruled St. Savin
from 1534 to 1540, under the authority of the commendatory
abbots, Anthony de Rochefort and Nicholas Dangu, Bishop of
Séez. Some of the commentators of the Heptameron believe
the latter to have been the original “Dagoucin” who is
supposed to tell several of the tales.—Ed.

The Abbot, who came of an ancient line, lodged them honourably, and
when taking them to their apartments inquired of them concerning their
adventures. When he had heard the truth, he told them that others had fared
as badly as they, for in one of his rooms he had two ladies who had escaped
a like danger, or perchance a greater, inasmuch as they had had to do with
beasts, and not with men. (5) Half a league on this side of Peyrechitte (6)
the poor ladies had met with a bear coming down from the mountain, before
whom they had fled with such speed that their horses fell dead under them
at the abbey gates. Further, two of their women who arrived a long time
afterwards had made report that the bear had killed all the serving-men.

5 In two MS. copies of the Heptameron in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris, numbered respectively 1520 and 1524, after
the words “not with men” there follows “in men there is some
mercy, but in animals none.”—L.

6 Peyrechitte is evidently intended for Pierrefitte, a
village on the left bank of the Gave, between Argelèz and
Cauterets.—Ed.

Then the two ladies and the three gentlemen entered the room where
these unhappy travellers were, and found them weeping. They recognised
them to be Nomerfide and Ennasuite, whereupon they all embraced and
recounted what had befallen them. At the exhortations of the good Abbot

they began to take comfort in having found one another again, and in the
morning they heard mass with much devotion, praising God for the perils
from which they had escaped.
While they were all at mass there came into the church (7) a man clad
only in a shirt, fleeing as though he were pursued, and crying out for aid.
Forthwith Hircan and the other gentlemen went to meet him to see what the
affair might mean, and perceived two men behind him with drawn swords.

(7) This church is still in existence. It is mainly in the
Romanesque style and almost destitute of ornamentation.
There are, however, some antique paintings of St. Savin’s
miracles; and the saint’s tomb, which is still preserved, is
considered to be some twelve hundred years old. The village
is gathered about the church, and forms a wide street lined
with houses of the fifteenth century, which Margaret and her
friends must have gazed upon during their sojourn here.—Ed.

These, on seeing so great a company, sought to fly, but they were hotly
pursued by Hircan and his companions, and so lost their lives. When Hircan
came back, he found that the man in the shirt was one of his companions
named Geburon, who related to them how while he was in bed at a
farmhouse near Peyrechitte three men came upstairs, and how he, although
he was in his shirt and had no other weapon but his sword, had stretched
one of them on the ground mortally wounded. While the other two were
occupied in raising their companion, he, perceiving himself to be naked and
the others armed, bethought him that he could not outdo them except it
were by flight, as being the least encumbered with clothes. And so he had
escaped, and for this he praised God and those who had avenged him.
When they had heard mass and had dined they sent to see if it was
possible to cross the river Gave, and on learning that it was not, they were
in great dismay. However, the Abbot urgently entreated them to stay with
him until the water had abated, and they agreed to remain for that day.
In the evening, as they were going to bed, there arrived an aged monk
who was wont to come in September of every year to Our Lady of Serrance.
They inquired of him concerning his journey, and he told them that on
account of the floods he had come over the mountains and by the worst
roads he had ever known. On the way he had seen a very pitiful sight. He
had met a gentleman named Simontault, who, wearied by his long waiting

for the river to subside, and trusting to the goodness of his horse, had tried
to force a passage, and had placed all his servants round about him to break
the force of the current. But when they were in the midst of the stream,
those who were the worst mounted were swept away, horses and men, down
the stream, and were never seen again. The gentleman, finding himself
alone, turned his horse to go back, but before he could reach the bank his
horse sank under him. Nevertheless, God willed that this should happen so
close to the bank that the gentleman was able, by dragging himself on all
fours and not without swallowing a great deal of water, to scramble out on
to the hard stones, though he was then so weak and weary that he could not
stand upright.
By good fortune a shepherd, bringing back his sheep at even, found
him seated among the stones, wet to the skin, and sad not only for himself
but on account of his servants whom he had seen perish before his eyes.
The shepherd, who understood his need even better from his appearance
than from his speech, took him by the hand and led him to his humble
dwelling, where he kindled some faggots, and so dried him in the best way
that he could. The same evening God led thither this good monk, who
showed him the road to Our Lady of Serrance assuring him that he would
be better lodged there than anywhere else, and would there find an aged
widow named Oisille who had been as unfortunate as himself.
When all the company heard tell of the good Lady Oisille and the
gentle knight Simontault, they were exceedingly glad, and praised the
Creator, who, content with the sacrifice of serving-folk, had preserved their
masters and mistresses. And more than all the rest did Parlamente give
hearty praise to God, for Simontault had long been her devoted lover.
Then they made diligent inquiry concerning the road to Serrance, and
although the good old man declared it to be very difficult, they were not to
be debarred from attempting to proceed thither that very day. They set forth
well furnished with all that was needful, for the Abbot provided them with
wine and abundant victuals,(8) and with willing companions to lead them
safely over the mountains.

8 According to MS. No. 1520 (Bib. Nat., Paris), the Abbot
also furnished them with the best horses of Lavedan and good
“cappes” of Beam. The Lavedan horses were renowned for their

speed and spirit, and the Bearnese cappe was a cloak
provided with a hood.—B. J.

These they crossed more often on foot than on horseback, and after
much toil and sweat came to Our Lady of Serrance. Here the Abbot,
although somewhat evilly disposed, durst not deny them lodging for fear of
the Lord of Beam,(9) who, as he was aware, held them in high esteem.
Being a true hypocrite, he showed them as fair a countenance as he could,
and took them to see the Lady Oisille and the gentle knight Simontault.

9 The Kings of Navarre had been Lords of Beam for two
centuries, but Beam still retained its old customs and had
its special government. The Lord of Beam here referred to
was Henry d’Albret, Margaret’s second husband.—B. J.

The joyfulness of all this company who had been thus miraculously
brought together was so great that the night seemed short to them while
praising God in the Church for the goodness that He had shown to them.
When towards morning they had taken a little rest, they all went to hear
mass and receive the holy sacrament of fellowship, in which all Christians
are joined together as one, imploring Him who of His mercy had thus
united them, that He would further their journey to His glory. After they had
dined they sent to learn whether the waters were at all abated, and found
that, on the contrary, they were rather increased, and could not be crossed
with safety for a long time to come. They therefore determined to make a
bridge resting on two rocks which come very close together, and where
there are still planks for those foot-passengers who, coming from Oleron,
wish to avoid crossing at the ford. The Abbot was well pleased that they
should make this outlay, to the end that the number of pilgrims might be
increased, and he furnished them with workmen, though he was too
avaricious to give them a single farthing.
The workmen declared that they could not finish the bridge in less than
ten or twelve days, and all the company, both ladies and gentlemen, began
to grow weary. But Parlamente, who was Hircan’s wife, and who was never
idle or melancholy, asked leave of her husband to speak, and said to the
aged Lady Oisille—
“I am surprised, madam, that you who have so much experience, and
now fill the place of mother to all of us women, do not devise some pastime
to relieve the weariness we shall feel during our long stay; for if we have

not some pleasant and virtuous occupation we shall be in danger of falling
ill.”
“Nay,” added the young widow Longarine, “worse than that, we shall
become ill-tempered, which is an incurable disease; for there is not one
among us but has cause to be exceeding downcast, having regard to our
several losses.”
Ennasuite laughing replied—
“Every one has not lost her husband like you, and the loss of servants
need not bring despair, since others may readily be found. Nevertheless, I
too am of opinion that we should have some pleasant exercise with which to
while away the time, for otherwise we shall be dead by to-morrow.”
All the gentlemen agreed with what these ladies said, and begged
Oisille to tell them what they should do.
“My children,” she replied, “you ask me for something which I find
very difficult to teach you, namely, a pastime that may deliver you from
your weariness. I have sought for such a remedy all my life and have never
found but one, which is the reading of the Holy Scriptures. In them the
mind may find that true and perfect joy from which repose and bodily
health proceed. If you would know by what means I continue so blithe and
healthy in my old age, it is because on rising I immediately take up the
Holy Scriptures (10) and read therein, and so perceive and contemplate the
goodness of God, who sent His Son into the world to proclaim to us the
Sacred Word and glad tidings by which He promises the remission of all
sins and the satisfaction of all debts by the gift that He has made us of His
love, passion, and merits.

10 Margaret read a portion of the Scriptures every day,
saying that the perusal preserved one “from all sorts of
evils and diabolical temptations” (Histoire de Foix, Béarn,
et Navarre, by P. Olhagaray, Paris, 1609, p. 502).—L.

“The thought of this gives me such joy that I take my Psalter and in all
humility sing with my heart and utter with my lips the sweet psalms and
canticles which the Holy Spirit put into the heart of David and of other
writers. And so acceptable is the contentment that this brings to me, that any
evils which may befall me during the day I look upon as blessings, seeing
that I have in my heart, through faith, Him who has borne them all for me.

In the same way before supper I retire to feed my soul by reading, and then
in the evening I call to mind all I have done during the past day, in order
that I may ask forgiveness for my sins, thank Him for His mercies, and,
feeling safe from all harm, take my rest in His love, fear, and peace. This,
my children, is the pastime I have long practised, after making trial of all
others and finding in none contentment of spirit. I believe that if you give
an hour every morning to reading and then offer up devout prayers during
mass, you will find in this lonely place all the beauty that any town could
afford. One who knows God sees all things fair in Him, and without Him
everything seems uncomely; wherefore, I pray you, accept my advice, if
you would live in gladness.”
Then Hircan took up the discourse and said—
“Those, madam, who have read the Holy Scriptures, as I believe we all
have done, will acknowledge that what you have said is true. You must,
however, consider that we are not yet so mortified that we have not need of
some pastime and bodily exercise. When we are at home we have the chase
and hawking, which cause us to lay aside a thousand foolish thoughts, and
the ladies have their household cares, their work, and sometimes the dance,
in all which they find honourable exercise. So, speaking on behalf of the
men, I propose that you, who are the oldest, read to us in the morning about
the life that was led by Our Lord Jesus Christ and the great and wonderful
works that He did for us; and that between dinner and vespers we choose
some pastime that shall be pleasant to the body and yet not hurtful to the
soul. In this way we shall pass the day cheerfully.”
The Lady Oisille replied that she had been at pains to forget every
description of worldly vanity, and she therefore feared that she should
succeed but ill in the choice of such an entertainment. The matter must be
decided by the majority of opinions, and she begged Hircan to set forth his
own first.
“For my part,” said he, “if I thought that the pastime I should choose
would be as agreeable to the company as to myself, my opinion would soon
be given. For the present, however, I withhold it, and will abide by what the
rest shall say.”
His wife Parlamente, thinking he referred to her, began to blush, and,
half in anger and half laughing, replied—

“Perhaps, Hircan, she who you think would find it most dull might
readily find means of compensation had she a mind for it. But let us leave
aside a pastime in which only two can share, and speak of one that shall be
common to all.”
“Since my wife has understood the meaning of my words so well,”
said Hircan to all the ladies, “and a private pastime is not to her liking, I
think she will be better able than any one else to name one that all may
enjoy; and I herewith give in to her opinion, having no other of my own.”
To this all the company agreed.
Parlamente, perceiving that it had fallen to her to decide, spoke as
follows—
“Did I find myself as capable as the ancients who invented the arts, I
should devise some sport or pastime in fulfilment of the charge you lay
upon me. But knowing as I do my knowledge and capacity, which are
scarcely able to recall the worthy performances of others, I shall think
myself happy if I can follow closely such as have already satisfied your
request. Among the rest, I think there is not one of you who has not read the
Hundred Tales of Boccaccio, (11) lately translated from the Italian into
French. So highly were these thought of by King Francis, first of that name,
Monseigneur the Dauphin, (12) Madame the Dauphiness, and Madame
Margaret, that could Boccaccio have only heard them from the place where
he lay, the praise of such illustrious persons would have raised him from the
dead.

11 Margaret here alludes to the French translation of the
Decameron made by her secretary, Anthony le Maçon, and
first issued in Paris in 1545. Messrs. De Lincy and
Montaiglon accordingly think that the prologue of the
Heptameron was written subsequently to that date; but M.
Dillaye states that Le Maçon’s translation was circulated at
Court in manuscript long before it was printed. This
contention is in some measure borne out by Le Maçon’s
dedication to Margaret, of which the more interesting
passages are given in the Appendix to this volume (A).—ED.

12 The Dauphin here mentioned is Francis I.‘s second son,
who subsequently reigned as Henry II. He became Dauphin by
the death of his elder brother on August 10, 1536. The
Dauphiness is Catherine de’ Medici, the wife of Henry, whom
he married in 1533; whilst Madame Margaret, according to M.

de Montaiglon, is the Queen of Navarre herself, she being
usually called by that name at her brother’s Court. M.
Dillaye, who is of a different opinion, maintains that the
Queen would not write so eulogistically of herself, and that
she evidently refers to her brother’s daughter, Margaret de
Berry, born in 1523, and married to the Duke of Savoy.—Ed.

Now I heard not long since that the two ladies I have mentioned,
together with several others of the Court, determined to do like Boccaccio,
with, however, one exception—they would not write any story that was not
a true one. And the said ladies, and Monseigneur the Dauphin with them,
undertook to tell ten stories each, and to assemble in all ten persons, from
among those whom they thought the most capable of relating something.
Such as had studied and were people of letters were excepted, for
Monseigneur the Dauphin would not allow of their art being brought in,
fearing lest the flowers of rhetoric should in some wise prove injurious to
the truth of the tales. But the weighty affairs in which the King had
engaged, the peace between him and the King of England, the bringing to
bed of the Dauphiness,(13) and many other matters of a nature to engross
the whole Court, caused the enterprise to be entirely forgotten.

13 The confinement mentioned here is that of Catherine de
Medici, who, after remaining childless during ten years of
wedlock, gave birth to a son, afterwards Francis II., in
January 1543. The peace previously spoken of would appear to
be that signed at Crespy in September 1544. Both M. de
Montaiglon and M. Dillaye are of opinion, however, that a
word or two is deficient in the MS., and that Margaret
intended to imply the rupture of peace in 1543, when Henry
VIII. allied himself with the Emperor Charles V. against
Francis I.—Ed.

By reason, however, of our now great leisure, it can be accomplished
in ten days, whilst we wait for our bridge to be finished. If it so pleased you,
we might go every day from noon till four of the clock into yonder pleasant
meadow beside the river Gave. The trees there are so leafy that the sun can
neither penetrate the shade nor change the coolness to heat. Sitting there at
our ease, we might each one tell a story of something we have ourselves
seen, or heard related by one worthy of belief. At the end of ten days we
shall have completed the hundred,(14) and if God wills it that our work be
found worthy in the eyes of the lords and ladies I have mentioned, we will
on our return from this journey present them with it, in lieu of images and

paternosters,(15) and feeling assured that they will hold this to be a more
pleasing gift. If, however, any one can devise some plan more agreeable
than mine, I will fall in with his opinion.”

14 This passage plainly indicates that the Queen meant to
pen a Decameron.—Ed.

15 This is an allusion to the holy images, medals, and
chaplets which people brought back with them from
pilgrimages.—B. J.

All the company replied that it was not possible to give better advice,
and that they awaited the morning in impatience, in order to begin.
Thus they spent that day joyously, reminding one another of what they
had seen in their time. As soon as the morning was come they went to the
room of Madame Oisille, whom they found already at her prayers. They
listened to her reading for a full hour, then piously heard mass, and
afterwards went to dinner at ten o’clock.(16)

16 At that period ten o’clock was the Court dinner-hour.
Fifty years earlier people used to dine at eight in the
morning. Louis XII., however, changed the hour of his meals
to suit his wife, Mary of England, who had been accustomed
to dine at noon.—B. J.

After dinner each one withdrew to his chamber, and did what he had to
do. According to their plan, at noon they failed not to return to the meadow,
which was so fair and pleasant that it would need a Boccaccio to describe it
as it really was; suffice to say that a fairer was never seen.
When the company were all seated on the green grass, which was so
fine and soft that they needed neither cushion nor carpet, Simontault
commenced by saying—
“Which of us shall begin before the others?”
“Since you were the first to speak,” replied Hircan,” ’tis reasonable
that you should rule us; for in sport we are all equal.”
“Would to God,” said Simontault, “I had no worse fortune in this
world than to be able to rule all the company present.”
On hearing this Parlamente, who well knew what it meant, began to
cough. Hircan, therefore, did not perceive the colour that came into her

cheeks, but told Simontault to begin, which he did as presently follows.

[Du Mesnil learns his Mistress’s Infidelity from her Maid]

FIRST DAY.
On the First Day are recounted the ill-turns which have been done by
Women to Men and by Men to Women.

TALE I.

The wife of a Proctor, having been pressingly solicited by
the Bishop of Sees, took him for her profit, and, being as
little satisfied with him as with her husband, found a means
to have the son of the Lieutenant-General of Alençon for her
pleasure. Some time afterwards she caused the latter to be
miserably murdered by her husband, who, although he obtained
pardon for the murder, was afterwards sent to the galleys
with a sorcerer named Gallery; and all this was brought
about by the wickedness of his wife.(1)

1 The incidents of this story are historical, and occurred
in Alençon and Paris between 1520 and 1525.—L.

Ladies, said Simontault, I have been so poorly rewarded for my long
service, that to avenge myself upon Love, and upon her who treats me so
cruelly, I shall be at pains to make a collection of all the ill turns that
women hath done to hapless men; and moreover I will relate nothing but the
simple truth.
In the town of Alençon, during the lifetime of Charles, the last Duke,
(2) there was a Proctor named St. Aignan, who had married a gentlewoman
of the neighbourhood. She was more beautiful than virtuous, and on
account of her beauty and light behaviour was much sought after by the
Bishop of Sees,(3) who, in order to compass his ends, managed the husband
so well, that the latter not only failed to perceive the vicious conduct of his
wife and of the Bishop, but was further led to forget the affection he had
always shown in the service of his master and mistress.

2 The Duke Charles here alluded to is Margaret’s first
husband.—Ed.

3 Sees or Séez, on the Orne, thirteen miles from Alençon,
and celebrated for its Gothic cathedral, is one of the
oldest bishoprics in Normandy. Richard Coeur-de-Lion is said
to have here done penance and obtained absolution for his
conduct towards his father, Henry II. At the time of this
story the Bishop of Sees was James de Silly, whose father,

also James de Silly, Lord of Lonray, Vaux-Pacey, &c, a
favourite and chamberlain of King Louis XII., became Master
of the Artillery of France in 1501. The second James de
Silly—born at Caen—was ordained Bishop of Sees on February
26th, 1511; he was also Abbot of St. Vigor and St. Pierre-
sur-Dives, where he restored and beautified the abbatial
church. In 1519 he consecrated a convent for women of noble
birth, founded by Margaret and her first husband at Essey,
twenty miles from Alençon, the ruins of which still exist. A
year later Francis Rometens dedicated to him an edition of
the letters of Pico della Mirandola. He died April 24th,
1539, at Fleury-sur-Aiidellé, about fifteen miles from
Rouen, and was buried in his episcopal church. (See Gallia
Christiana, vol. xi. p. 702.) His successor in the See of
Sees was Nicholas Danguye, or Dangu (a natural son of
Cardinal Duprat), with whom M. Frank tries to identify
Dagoucin, one of the narrators of the Heptameron.—L. and
Ed.

Thus, from being a loyal servant, he became utterly adverse to them,
and at last sought out sorcerers to procure the death of the Duchess.(4) Now
for a long time the Bishop consorted with this unhappy woman, who
submitted to him from avarice rather than from love, and also because her
husband urged her to show him favour. But there was a youth in the town of
Alençon, son of the Lieutenant-General,(5) whom she loved so much that
she was half crazy regarding him; and she often availed herself of the
Bishop to have some commission intrusted to her husband, so that she
might see the son of the Lieutenant, who was named Du Mesnil, at her ease.

4 This was of course Margaret herself.—Ed

5 Gilles du Mesnil, Lieutenant-General of the presidial
bailiwick and Sénéchaussée of Alençon.—B. J.

This mode of life lasted a long time, during which she had the Bishop
for her profit and the said Du Mesnil for her pleasure. To the latter she
swore that she showed a fair countenance to the Bishop only that their own
love might the more freely continue; that the Bishop, in spite of
appearances, had obtained only words, from her; and that he, Du Mesnil,
might rest assured that no man, save himself, should ever receive aught
else.
One day, when her husband was setting forth to visit the Bishop, she
asked leave of him to go into the country, saying that the air of the town

was injurious to her; and, when she had arrived at her farm, she forthwith
wrote to Du Mesnil to come and see her, without fail, at about ten o’clock in
the evening. This the young man did; but as he was entering at the gate he
met the maid who was wont to let him in, and who said to him, “Go
elsewhere, friend, for your place is taken.”
Supposing that the husband had arrived, he asked her how matters
stood. The woman, seeing that he was so handsome, youthful, and well-
bred, and was withal so loving and yet so little loved, took pity upon him
and told him of his mistress’s wantonness, thinking that on hearing this he
would be cured of loving her so much. She related to him that the Bishop of
Sees had but just arrived, and was now in bed with the lady, a thing which
the latter had not expected, for he was not to have come until the morrow.
However, he had detained her husband at his house, and had stolen away at
night to come secretly and see her. If ever man was in despair it was Du
Mesnil, who nevertheless was quite unable to believe the story. He hid
himself, however, in a house near by, and watched until three hours after
midnight, when he saw the Bishop come forth disguised, yet not so
completely but that he could recognise him more readily than he desired.
Du Mesnil in his despair returned to Alençon, whither, likewise, his
wicked mistress soon came, and went to speak to him, thinking to deceive
him according to her wont. But he told her that, having touched sacred
things, she was too holy to speak to a sinner like himself, albeit his
repentance was so great that he hoped his sin would very soon be forgiven
him. When she learnt that her deceit was found out, and that excuses, oaths,
and promises never to act in a like way again were of no avail, she
complained of it to her Bishop. Then, having weighed the matter with him,
she went to her husband and told him that she could no longer dwell in the
town of Alençon, for the Lieutenant’s son, whom he had so greatly
esteemed among his friends, pursued her unceasingly to rob her of her
honour. She therefore begged of him to abide at Argentan,(6) in order that
all suspicion might be removed.

6 Argentan, on the Orne, twenty-six miles from Alençon, had
been a distinct viscounty, but at this period it belonged to
the duchy of Alençon.—Ed.

The husband, who suffered himself to be ruled by his wife, consented;
but they had not been long at Argentan when this bad woman sent a
message to Du Mesnil, saying that he was the wickedest man in the world,
for she knew full well that he had spoken evilly (sic.) of her and of the
Bishop of Sees; however, she would strive her best to make him repent of it.
The young man, who had never spoken of the matter except to herself,
and who feared to fall into the bad graces of the Bishop, repaired to
Argentan with two of his servants, and finding his mistress at vespers in the
church of the Jacobins,(7) he went and knelt beside her, and said—
“I am come hither, madam, to swear to you before God that I have
never spoken of your honour to any person but yourself. You treated me so
ill that I did not make you half the reproaches you deserved; but if there be
man or woman ready to say that I have ever spoken of the matter to them, I
am here to give them the lie in your presence.”

7 The name of Jacobins was given to the monks of the
Dominican Order, some of whom had a monastery in the suburbs
of Argentan.—Ed.

Seeing that there were many people in the church, and that he was
accompanied by two stout serving-men, she forced herself to speak as
graciously as she could. She told him that she had no doubt he spoke the
truth, and that she deemed him too honourable a man to make evil report of
any one in the world; least of all of herself, who bore him so much
friendship; but since her husband had heard the matter spoken of, she
begged him to say in his presence that he had not so spoken and did not so
believe.
To this he willingly agreed, and, wishing to attend her to her house, he
offered to take her arm; but she told him it was not desirable that he should
come with her, for her husband would think that she had put these words
into his mouth. Then, taking one of his serving-men by the sleeve, she said
—
“Leave me this man, and as soon as it is time I will send him to seek
you. Meanwhile do you go and rest in your lodging.”
He, having no suspicion of her conspiracy against him, went thither.
She gave supper to the serving-man whom she had kept with her, and
who frequently asked her when it would be time to go and seek his master;

but she always replied that his master would come soon enough. When it
was night, she sent one of her own serving-men to fetch Du Mesnil; and he,
having no suspicion of the mischief that was being prepared for him, went
boldly to St. Aignan’s house. As his mistress was still entertaining his
servant there, he had but one with himself.
Just as he was entering the house, the servant who had been sent to
him told him that the lady wished to speak with him before he saw her
husband, and that she was waiting for him in a room where she was alone
with his own serving-man; he would therefore do well to send his other
servant away by the front door. This he did. Then while he was going up a
small, dark stairway, the Proctor St. Aignan, who had placed some men in
ambush in a closet, heard the noise, and demanded what it was; whereupon
he was told that a man was trying to enter secretly into his house.
At the moment, a certain Thomas Guérin, a murderer by trade, who
had been hired by the Proctor for the purpose, came forward and gave the
poor young man so many sword-thrusts that whatever defence he was able
to make could not save him from falling dead in their midst.
Meanwhile the servant who was waiting with the lady, said to her—
“I hear my master speaking on the stairway. I will go to him.”
But the lady stopped him and said—
“Do not trouble yourself; he will come soon enough.”
A little while afterwards the servant, hearing his master say, “I am
dying, may God receive my soul!” wished to go to his assistance, but the
lady again withheld him, saying—
“Do not trouble yourself; my husband is only chastising him for his
follies. We will go and see what it is.”
Then, leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairway, she asked
her husband—
“Well, is it done?”
“Come and see,” he replied. “I have now avenged you on the man who
put you to such shame.”
So saying, he drove a dagger that he was holding ten or twelve times
into the belly of a man whom, alive, he would not have dared to assail.

When the murder had been accomplished, and the two servants of the
dead man had fled to carry the tidings to the unhappy father, St. Aignan
bethought himself that the matter could not be kept secret. But he reflected
that the testimony of the dead man’s servants would not be believed, and
that no one in his house had seen the deed done, except the murderers, and
an old woman-servant, and a girl fifteen years of age. He secretly tried to
seize the old woman, but, finding means to escape out of his hands, she
sought sanctuary with the Jacobins,(8) and was afterwards the most
trustworthy witness of the murder. The young maid remained for a few days
in St. Aignan’s house, but he found means to have her led astray by one of
the murderers, and had her conveyed to a brothel in Paris so that her
testimony might not be received.(9)

8 It was still customary to take sanctuary in churches,
monasteries, and convents at this date, although but little
respect was shown for the refugees, whose hiding-places were
often surrounded so that they might be kept without food and
forced to surrender. After being considerably restricted by
an edict issued in 1515, the right of sanctuary was
abolished by Francis I. in 1539.—B. J. and D.

9 Prostitutes were debarred from giving evidence in French
courts of law at this period.—D.

To conceal the murder, he caused the corpse of the hapless dead man
to be burnt, and the bones which were not consumed by the fire he caused
to be placed in some mortar in a part of his house where he was building.
Then he sent in all haste to the Court to sue for pardon, setting forth that he
had several times forbidden his house to a person whom he suspected of
plotting his wife’s dishonour, and who, notwithstanding his prohibition, had
come by night to see her in a suspicious fashion; whereupon, finding him in
the act of entering her room, his anger had got the better of his reason and
he had killed him.
But before he was able to despatch his letter to the Chancellor’s, the
Duke and Duchess had been apprised by the unhappy father of the matter,
and they sent a message to the Chancellor to prevent the granting of the
pardon. Finding he could not obtain it, the wretched man fled to England
with his wife and several of his relations. But before setting out he told the
murderer who at his entreaty had done the deed, that he had seen expresses

from the King directing that he should be taken and put to death.
Nevertheless, on account of the service that he had rendered him, he desired
to save his life, and he gave him ten crowns wherewith to leave the
kingdom. The murderer did this, and was afterwards seen no more.
The murder was so fully proven by the servants of the dead man, by
the woman who had taken refuge with the Jacobins, and by the bones that
were found in the mortar, that legal proceedings were begun and completed
in the absence of St. Aignan and his wife. They were judged by default and
were both condemned to death. Their property was confiscated to the
Prince, and fifteen hundred crowns were to be given to the dead man’s
father to pay the costs of the trial.
St. Aignan being in England and perceiving that in the eyes of the law
he was dead in France, by means of his services to divers great lords and by
the favour of his wife’s relations, induced the King of England (10) to
request the King of France (11) to grant him a pardon and restore him to his
possessions and honours. But the King of France, having been informed of
the wickedness and enormity of the crime, sent the process to the King of
England, praying him to consider whether the offence was one deserving of
pardon, and telling him that no one in the kingdom but the Duke of Alençon
had the right to grant a pardon in that duchy. However, notwithstanding all
his excuses, he failed to appease the King of England, who continued to
entreat him so very pressingly that, at his request, the Proctor at last
received a pardon and so returned to his own home.(12) There, to complete
his wickedness, he consorted with a sorcerer named Gallery, hoping that by
this man’s art he might escape payment of the fifteen hundred crowns to the
dead man’s father.

10 Henry VIII.

11 Francis I.

12 The letters of remission which were granted to St. Aignan
on this occasion will be found in the Appendix to the First
Day (B). It will be noted that Margaret in her story gives
various particulars which St. Aignan did not fail to conceal
in view of obtaining his pardon.—L.

To this end he went in disguise to Paris with his wife. She, finding that
he used to shut himself up for a great while in a room with Gallery without

acquainting her with the reason thereof, spied upon him one morning, and
perceived Gallery showing him five wooden images, three of which had
their hands hanging down, whilst two had them lifted up.(13)
“We must make waxen images like these,” said Gallery, speaking to
the Proctor. “Such as have their arms hanging down will be for those whom
we shall cause to die, and the others with their arms raised will be for the
persons from whom you would fain have love and favour.”
“This one,” said the Proctor, “shall be for the King by whom I would
fain be loved, and this one for Monseigneur Brinon, Chancellor of
Alençon.” (14)

13 This refers to the superstitious practice called
envoûtement, which, according to M. Léon de Laborde, was
well known in France in 1316, and subsisted until the
sixteenth century. In 1330 the famous Robert d’Artois, upon
retiring to Brabant, occupied himself with pricking waxen
images which represented King Philip VI., his brother-in-
law, and the Queen, his sister. (Mémoires de l’Académie des
Inscriptions, vol. xv. p. 426.) During the League the
enemies of Henri III. and the King of Navarre revived this
practice.—(L.) It would appear also from a document in the
Harley MSS. (18,452, Bib. N’at., Paris) that Cosmo Ruggieri,
the Florentine astrologer, Catherine de’ Medici’s
confidential adviser, was accused in 1574 of having made a
wax figure in view of casting a spell upon Charles IX.—M.

14 John Brinon, Councillor of the King, President of the
Parliament of Rouen, Chancellor of Alençon and Berry, Lord
of Villaines (near Dreux), Remy, and Athueuil (near
Montfort-l’Amaury), belonged to an old family of judicial
functionaries. He was highly esteemed by Margaret, several
of whose letters are addressed to him, and he was present at
the signing of her marriage contract with Henry II. of
Navarre (Génin’s Lettres de Marguerite, p. 444). He
married Pernelle Perdrier, who brought him the lordship of
Médan, near Poissy, and other important fiefs, which after
his death she presented to the King. His praises were sung
by Le Chandelier, the poet; and M. Floquet, in his History
of the Parliament of Normandy, states that Brinon rendered
most important services to France as a negotiator in Italy
in 1521, and in England in 1524. The Journal d’un Bourgeois
de Paris mentions that he died in Paris in 1528, aged
forty-four, and was buried in the Church of St. Severin.—L.
According to La Croix du Maine’s Bibliothèque Françoise,

Brinon was the author of a poem entitled Les Amours de
Sydire.—B. J.

“The images,” said Gallery, “must be set under the altar, to hear mass,
with words that I will presently tell you to say.”
Then, speaking of those images that had their arms lowered, the
Proctor said that one should be for Master Gilles du Mesnil, father of the
dead man, for he knew that as long as the father lived he would not cease to
pursue him. Moreover, one of the women with their hands hanging down
was to be for the Duchess of Alençon, sister to the King; for she bore so
much love to her old servant, Du Mesnil, and had in so many other matters
become acquainted with the Proctor’s wickedness, that except she died he
could not live. The second woman that had her arms hanging down was his
own wife, who was the cause of all his misfortune, and who he felt sure
would never amend her evil life.
When his wife, who could see everything through the keyhole, heard
him placing her among the dead, she resolved to send him among them
first. On pretence of going to borrow some money, she went to an uncle she
had, named Neaufle, who was Master of Requests to the Duke of Alençon,
and informed him of what she had seen and heard. Neaufle, like the old and
worthy servant that he was, went forthwith to the Chancellor of Alençon
and told him the whole story.
As the Duke and Duchess of Alençon were not at Court that day, the
Chancellor related this strange business to the Regent,(15) mother of the
King and the Duchess, and she sent in all haste for the Provost of Paris,(16)
who made such speed that he at once seized the Proctor and his sorcerer,
Gallery. Without constraint or torture they freely confessed their guilt, and
their case was made out and laid before the King.

15 Louise of Savoy.

16 John de la Barre, a favourite of Francis I. See note to
Tale lxiii. (vol. v.), in which he plays a conspicuous
part.—Ed.

Certain persons, wishing to save their lives, told him that they had only
sought his good graces by their enchantments; but the King, holding his
sister’s life as dear as his own, commanded that the same sentence should
be passed on them as if they had made an attempt on his own person.

However, his sister, the Duchess of Alençon, entreated that the
Proctor’s life might be spared, and the sentence of death be commuted to
some heavy punishment. This request was granted her, and St. Aignan and
Gallery were sent to the galleys of St. Blancart at Marseilles,(17) where
they ended their days in close captivity, and had leisure to ponder on the
grievousness of their crimes. The wicked wife, in the absence of her
husband, continued in her sinful ways even more than before, and at last
died in wretchedness.

17 This passage is explained by Henri Bouché, who states in
his Histoire Chronologique de Provence (vol. ii. p. 554),
that after Francis I.‘s voyage in captivity to Spain it was
judged expedient that France should have several galleys in
the Mediterranean, and that “orders were accordingly given
for thirteen to be built at Marseilles—four for the Baron
de Saint-Blancart, as many for Andrew Doria, &c.” The Baron
de Saint-Blancart here referred to was Bernard d’Ormezan,
Admiral of the seas of the Levant, Conservator of the ports
and tower of Aigues-Mortes, and General of the King’s
galleys. In 1523 he defeated the naval forces of the Emperor
Charles V., and in 1525 conducted Margaret to Spain.—L.
(See Memoir of Margaret, p. xli.)

“I pray you, ladies, consider what evil is caused by a wicked woman,
and how many evils sprang from the sins of the one I have spoken of. You
will find that ever since Eve caused Adam to sin, all women have set
themselves to bring about the torment, slaughter and damnation of men. For
myself, I have had such experience of their cruelty that I expect to die and
be damned simply by reason of the despair into which one of them has cast
me. And yet so great a fool am I, that I cannot but confess that hell coming
from her hand is more pleasing than Paradise would be from the hand of
another.”
Parlamente, pretending she did not understand that it was touching
herself he spoke in this fashion, said to him—
“Since hell is as pleasant as you say, you ought not to fear the devil
who has placed you in it.”
“If my devil were to become as black as he has been cruel to me,”
answered Simontault angrily, “he would cause the present company as
much fright as I find pleasure in looking upon them; but the fires of love
make me forget those of this hell. However, to speak no further concerning

this matter, I give my vote to Madame Oisille to tell the second story. I feel
sure she would support my opinion if she were willing to say what she
knows about women.”
Forthwith all the company turned towards Oisille, and begged of her to
proceed, to which she consented, and, laughing, began as follows—
“It seems to me, ladies, that he who has given me his vote has spoken
so ill of our sex in his true story of a wicked woman, that I must call to
mind all the years of my long life to find one whose virtue will suffice to
gainsay his evil opinion. However, as I have bethought me of one worthy to
be remembered, I will now relate her history to you.”

[The Muleteer’s Servant attacking his Mistress]

TALE II.

The wife of a muleteer of Amboise chose rather to die
cruelly at the hands of her servant than to fall in with his
wicked purpose.(1)

In the town of Amboise there was a muleteer in the service of the
Queen of Navarre, sister to King Francis, first of that name. She being at
Blois, where she had been brought to bed of a son, the aforesaid muleteer
went thither to receive his quarterly payment, whilst his wife remained at
Amboise in a lodging beyond the bridges.(2)

1 The incidents of this story probably took place at
Amboise, subsequent, however, to the month of August 1530,
when Margaret was confined of her son John.—L.

2 Amboise is on the left bank of the Loire, and there have
never been any buildings on the opposite bank. However,
the bridge over the river intersects the island of St. Jean,
which is covered with houses, and here the muleteer’s wife
evidently resided.—M.

Now it happened that one of her husband’s servants had long loved her
exceedingly, and one day he could not refrain from speaking of it to her.
She, however, being a truly virtuous woman, rebuked him so severely,
threatening to have him beaten and dismissed by her husband, that from that
time forth he did not venture to speak to her in any such way again or to let
his love be seen, but kept the fire hidden within his breast until the day
when his master had gone from home and his mistress was at vespers at St.
Florentin,(3) the castle church, a long way from the muleteer’s house.

3 The Church of St. Florentin here mentioned must not be
confounded with that of the same name near one of the gates
of Amboise. Erected in the tenth century by Foulques Nera of
Anjou, it was a collegiate church, and was attended by the
townsfolk, although it stood within the precincts of the
château. For this reason Queen Margaret calls it the castle
church.—Ed.

Whilst he was alone the fancy took him that he might obtain by force
what neither prayer nor service had availed to procure him, and accordingly
he broke through a wooden partition which was between the chamber where
his mistress slept and his own. The curtains of his master’s bed on the one
side and of the servant’s bed on the other so covered the walls as to hide the
opening he had made; and thus his wickedness was not perceived until his
mistress was in bed, together with a little girl eleven or twelve years old.
When the poor woman was in her first sleep, the servant, in his shirt
and with his naked sword in his hand, came through the opening he had
made in the wall into her bed; but as soon as she felt him beside her, she
leaped out, addressing to him all such reproaches as a virtuous woman
might utter. His love, however, was but bestial, and he would have better
understood the language of his mules than her honourable reasonings;
indeed, he showed himself even more bestial than the beasts with whom he
had long consorted. Finding she ran so quickly round a table that he could
not catch her, and that she was strong enough to break away from him
twice, he despaired of ravishing her alive, and dealt her a terrible sword-
thrust in the loins, thinking that, if fear and force had not brought her to
yield, pain would assuredly do so.
The contrary, however, happened, for just as a good soldier, on seeing
his own blood, is the more fired to take vengeance on his enemies and win
renown, so her chaste heart gathered new strength as she ran fleeing from
the hands of the miscreant, saying to him the while all she could think of to
bring him to see his guilt. But so filled was he with rage that he paid no
heed to her words. He dealt her several more thrusts, to avoid which she
continued running as long as her legs could carry her.
When, after great loss of blood, she felt that death was near, she lifted
her eyes to heaven, clasped her hands and gave thanks to God, calling Him
her strength, her patience, and her virtue, and praying Him to accept her
blood which had been shed for the keeping of His commandment and in
reverence of His Son, through whom she firmly believed all her sins to be
washed away and blotted out from the remembrance of His wrath.
As she was uttering the words, “Lord, receive the soul that has been
redeemed by Thy goodness,” she fell upon her face to the ground.
Then the miscreant dealt her several thrusts, and when she had lost
both power of speech and strength of body, and was no longer able to make

any defence, he ravished her.(4)

4 Brantôme, in his account of Mary Queen of Scots, quotes
this story. After mentioning that the headsman remained
alone with the Queen’s decapitated corpse, he adds: “He then
took off her shoes and handled her as he pleased. It is
suspected that he treated her in the same way as that
miserable muleteer, in the Hundred Stories of the Queen of
Navarre, treated the poor woman he killed. Stranger
temptations than this come to men. After he (the
executioner) had done as he chose, the (Queen’s) body was
carried into a room adjoining that of her servants.”
Lalanne’s OEuvres de Brantôme, vol. vii. p. 438.—M.

Having thus satisfied his wicked lust, he fled in haste, and in spite of
all pursuit was never seen again.
The little girl, who was in bed with the muleteer’s wife, had hidden
herself under the bed in her fear; but on seeing that the man was gone, she
came to her mistress. Finding her to be without speech or movement, she
called to the neighbours from the window for aid; and as they loved and
esteemed her mistress as much as any woman that belonged to the town,
they came forthwith, bringing surgeons with them. The latter found that she
had received twenty-five mortal wounds in her body, and although they did
what they could to help her, it was all in vain.
Nevertheless she lingered for an hour longer without speaking, yet
making signs with eye and hand to show that she had not lost her
understanding. Being asked by a priest in what faith she died, she answered,
by signs as plain as any speech, that she placed her hope of salvation in
Jesus Christ alone; and so with glad countenance and eyes upraised to
heaven her chaste body yielded up its soul to its Creator.
Just as the corpse, having been laid out and shrouded,(5) was placed at
the door to await the burial company, the poor husband arrived and beheld
his wife’s body in front of his house before he had even received tidings of
her death. He inquired the cause of this, and found that he had double
occasion to grieve; and his grief was indeed so great that it nearly killed
him.

5 Common people were then buried in shrouds, not in coffins.
—Ed.

This martyr of chastity was buried in the Church of St. Florentin, and,
as was their duty, all the upright women of Amboise failed not to show her
every possible honour, deeming themselves fortunate in belonging to a
town where so virtuous a woman had been found. And seeing the honour
that was shown to the deceased, such women as were wanton and unchaste
resolved to amend their lives.
“This, ladies, is a true story, which should incline us more strongly to
preserve the fair virtue of chastity. We who are of gentle blood should die of
shame on feeling in our hearts that worldly lust to avoid which the poor
wife of a muleteer shrank not from so cruel a death. Some esteem
themselves virtuous women who have never like this one resisted unto the
shedding of blood. It is fitting that we should humble ourselves, for God
does not vouchsafe His grace to men because of their birth or riches, but
according as it pleases His own good-will. He pays no regard to persons,
but chooses according to His purpose; and he whom He chooses He
honours with all virtues. And often He chooses the lowly to confound those
whom the world exalts and honours; for, as He Himself hath told us, ‘Let us
not rejoice in our merits, but rather because our names are written in the
Book of Life, from which nor death, nor hell, nor sin can blot them out.’”
(6)

6 These are not the exact words of Scripture, but a
combination of several passages from the Book of
Revelation.—Ed.

There was not a lady in the company but had tears of compassion in
her eyes for the pitiful and glorious death of the muleteer’s wife. Each
thought within herself that, should fortune serve her in the same way, she
would strive to imitate this poor woman in her martyrdom. Oisille,
however, perceiving that time was being lost in praising the dead woman,
said to Saffredent—
“Unless you can tell us something that will make the company laugh, I
think none of them will forgive me for the fault I have committed in making
them weep; wherefore I give you my vote for your telling of the third
story.”
Saffredent, who would gladly have recounted something agreeable to
the company, and above all to one amongst the ladies, said that it was not

for him to speak, seeing that there were others older and better instructed
than himself, who should of right come first. Nevertheless, since the lot had
fallen upon himself, he would rather have done with it at once, for the more
numerous the good speakers before him, the worse would his own tale
appear.

[The King Joking upon the Stag’s Head being A fitting Decoration]

TALE III.

The Queen of Naples, being wronged by King Alfonso, her
husband, revenged herself with a gentleman whose wife was
the King’s mistress; and this intercourse lasted all their
lives without the King at any time having suspicion of
it.(1)

I have often desired, ladies, to be a sharer in the good fortune of the
man whose story I am about to relate to you. You must know that in the
time of King Alfonso,(2) whose lust was the sceptre of his kingdom,(3)
there lived in the town of Naples a gentleman, so honourable, comely, and
pleasant that his perfections induced an old gentleman to give him his
daughter in marriage.

1 This story is historical. The events occurred at Naples
cir. 1450.—L.

2 The King spoken of in this story must be Alfonso V., King
of Aragon, who was born in 1385, and succeeded his father,
Ferdinand the Just, in 1416. He had already made various
expeditions to Sardinia and Corsica, when, in 1421, Jane II.
of Naples begged of him to assist her in her contest against
Louis of Anjou. Alfonso set sail for Italy as requested, but
speedily quarrelled with Jane, on account of the manner in
which he treated her lover, the Grand Seneschal Caraccioli.
Jane, at her death in 1438, bequeathed her crown to René,
brother of Louis of Anjou, whose claims Alfonso immediately
opposed. Whilst blockading Gaëta he was defeated and
captured, but ultimately set at liberty, whereupon he
resumed the war. In 1442 he at last secured possession of
Naples, and compelled René to withdraw from Italy. From that
time Alfonso never returned to Spain, but settling himself
in his Italian dominions, assumed the title of King of the
Two Sicilies. He obtained the surname of the Magnanimous,
from his generous conduct towards some conspirators, a list
of whose names he tore to pieces unread, saying, “I will
show these noblemen that I have more concern for their lives
than they have themselves.” The surname of the Learned was
afterwards given to him from the circumstance that, like his
rival René of Anjou, he personally cultivated letters, and
also protected many of the leading learned men of Italy.

Alfonso was fond of strolling about the streets of Naples
unattended, and one day, when he was cautioned respecting
this habit, he replied, “A father who walks abroad in the
midst of his children has no cause for fear.” Whilst
possessed of many remarkable qualities, Alfonso, as Muratori
and other writers have shown, was of an extremely licentious
disposition. That he had no belief in conjugal fidelity is
evidenced by his saying that “to ensure domestic happiness
the husband should be deaf and the wife blind.” He himself
had several mistresses, and lived at variance with his wife,
respecting whom some particulars are given in a note on page
69. He died in 1458, at the age of seventy-four, bequeathing
his Italian possessions to Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, his
natural son by a Spanish beauty named Margaret de Hijar. It
may be added that Brantôme makes a passing allusion to this
tale of the Heptameron in his Vies des Dames Galantes
(Disc, i.), styling it “a very fine one.”—L. and Ed.

3 Meaning that he employed his sovereign authority for the
accomplishment of his amorous desires.—M.

She vied with her husband in grace and comeliness, and there was
great love between them, until a certain day in Carnival time, when the
King went masked from house to house. All strove to give him the best
welcome they could, but when he came to this gentleman’s house he was
entertained better than anywhere else, what with sweetmeats, and singers,
and music, and, further, the fairest woman that, to his thinking, he had ever
seen. At the end of the feast she sang a song with her husband in so graceful
a fashion that she seemed more beautiful than ever.
The King, perceiving so many perfections united in one person, was
not over pleased at the gentle harmony between the husband and wife, and
deliberated how he might destroy it. The chief difficulty he met with was in
the great affection which he observed existed between them, and on this
account he hid his passion in his heart as deeply as he could. To relieve it in
some measure, he gave many entertainments to the lords and ladies of
Naples, and at these the gentleman and his wife were not forgotten. Now,
inasmuch as men willingly believe what they desire, it seemed to the King
that the glances of this lady gave him fair promise of future happiness, if
only she were not restrained by her husband’s presence. Accordingly, that
he might learn whether his surmise was true, the King intrusted a
commission to the husband, and sent him on a journey to Rome for a
fortnight or three weeks.

As soon as the gentleman was gone, his wife, who had never before
been separated from him, was in great distress; but the King comforted her
as often as he was able, with gentle persuasions and presents, so that at last
she was not only consoled, but well pleased with her husband’s absence.
Before the three weeks were over at the end of which he was to be home
again, she had come to be so deeply in love with the King that her
husband’s return was no less displeasing to her than his departure had been.
Not wishing to be deprived of the King’s society, she agreed with him that
whenever her husband went to his country-house she would give him notice
of it. He might then visit her in safety, and with such secrecy that her
honour, which she regarded more than her conscience, would not suffer.(4)

4 The edition of 1558 is here followed, the MSS. being
rather obscure.—M.

Having this hope, the lady continued of very cheerful mind, and when
her husband arrived she welcomed him so heartily that, even had he been
told that the King had sought her in his absence, he would have had no
suspicion. In course of time, however, the flame, that is so difficult of
concealment, began to show itself, and the husband, having a strong inkling
of the truth, kept good watch, by which means he was well-nigh convinced.
Nevertheless, as he feared that the man who wronged him would treat him
still worse if he appeared to notice it, he resolved to dissemble, holding it
better to live in trouble than to risk his life for a woman who had ceased to
love him.
In his vexation of spirit, however, he resolved, if he could, to retort
upon the King, and knowing that women, especially such as are of lofty and
honourable minds, are more moved by resentment than by love, he made
bold one day while speaking with the Queen (5) to tell her that it moved his
pity to see her so little loved by the King.

5 This was Mary (daughter of Henry III. of Castile), who was
married to King Alfonso at Valencia on June 29, 1415. Juan
de Mariana, the Spanish historian, records that the ceremony
was celebrated with signal pomp by the schismatical Pope
Benedict XIII. The bride brought her husband a dowry of
200,000 ducats, and also various territorial possessions.
The marriage, however, was not a happy one, on account of
Alfonso’s licentious disposition, and the Queen is said to

have strangled one of his mistresses, Margaret de Hijar, in
a fit of jealousy. Alfonso, to escape from his wife’s
interference, turned his attention to foreign expeditions.
According to the authors of L’Art de Vérifier les Dates,
Queen Mary never once set foot in Italy, and this statement
is borne out by Mariana, who shows that whilst Alfonso was
reigning in Naples his wife governed the kingdom of Aragon,
making war and signing truces and treaties of peace with
Castile. In the Heptameron, therefore, Margaret departs
from historical accuracy when she represents the Queen as
residing at Naples with her husband. Moreover, judging by
the date of Mary’s marriage, she could no longer have been
young when Alfonso secured the Neapolitan throne. It is to
be presumed that the Queen of Navarre designedly changed the
date of her story, and that the incidents referred to really
occurred in Spain prior to Alfonso’s departure for Italy.
There is no mention of Mary in her husband’s will, a
remarkable document which is still extant. A letter written
to her by Pope Calixtus II. shows that late in life the King
was desirous of repudiating her to marry an Italian mistress
named Lucretia Alania. The latter repaired to Rome to
negotiate the affair, but the Pope refused to treat with
her, and wrote to Mary saying that she must be prudent, but
that he would not dissolve the marriage, lest God should
punish him for participating in so great a crime. Mary died
a few months after her husband in 1458, and was buried in a
convent at Valencia.—L. and Ed.

The Queen, who had heard of the affection that existed between the
King and the gentleman’s wife, replied—
“I cannot have both honour and pleasure together. I well know that I
have the honour whilst another has the pleasure; and in the same way she
who has the pleasure has not the honour that is mine.”
Thereupon the gentleman, who understood full well at whom these
words were aimed, replied—
“Madam, honour is inborn with you, for your lineage is such that no
title, whether of queen or empress, could be an increase of nobility; yet your
beauty, grace, and virtue are well deserving of pleasure, and she who robs
you of what is yours does a greater wrong to herself than to you, seeing that
for a glory which is turned to her shame, she loses as much pleasure as you
or any lady in the realm could enjoy. I can truly tell you, madam, that were
the King to lay aside his crown, he would not possess any advantage over
me in satisfying a lady; nay, I am sure that to content one so worthy as
yourself he would indeed be pleased to change his temperament for mine.”

The Queen laughed and replied—
“The King may be of a less vigorous temperament than you, yet the
love he bears me contents me well, and I prefer it to any other.”
“Madam,” said the gentleman, “if that were so, I should have no pity
for you. I feel sure that you would be well pleased if the like of your own
virtuous love were found in the King’s heart; but God has withheld this
from you in order that, not finding what you desire in your husband, you
may not make him your god on earth.”
“I confess to you,” said the Queen, “that the love I bear him is so great
that the like could not be found in any other heart but mine.”
“Pardon me, madam,” said the gentleman; “you have not fathomed the
love of every heart. I will be so bold as to tell you that you are loved by one
whose love is so great and measureless that your own is as nothing beside
it. The more he perceives that the King’s love fails you, the more does his
own wax and increase, in such wise that, were it your pleasure, you might
be recompensed for all you have lost.”
The Queen began to perceive, both from these words and from the
gentleman’s countenance, that what he said came from the depth of his
heart. She remembered also that for a long time he had so zealously sought
to do her service that he had fallen into sadness. She had hitherto deemed
this to be on account of his wife, but now she was firmly of belief that it
was for love of herself. Moreover, the very quality of love, which compels
itself to be recognised when it is unfeigned, made her feel certain of what
had been hidden from every one. As she looked at the gentleman, who was
far more worthy of being loved than her husband, she reflected that he was
forsaken by his wife, as she herself was by the King; and then, beset by
vexation and jealousy against her husband, as well as moved by the love of
the gentleman, she began with sighs and tearful eyes to say—
“Ah me! shall revenge prevail with me where love has been of no
avail?”
The gentleman, who understood what these words meant, replied—
“Vengeance, madam, is sweet when in place of slaying an enemy it
gives life to a true lover.(6) Methinks it is time that truth should cause you
to abandon the foolish love you bear to one who loves you not, and that a
just and reasonable love should banish fear, which cannot dwell in a noble

and virtuous heart. Come, madam, let us set aside the greatness of your
station and consider that, of all men and women in the world, we are the
most deceived, betrayed, and bemocked by those whom we have most truly
loved. Let us avenge ourselves, madam, not so much to requite them in the
way they deserve as to satisfy that love which, for my own part, I cannot
continue to endure and live. And I think that, unless your heart be harder
than flint or diamond, you cannot but feel some spark from the fires which
only increase the more I seek to conceal them. If pity for me, who am dying
of love for you, does not move you to love me, at least pity for yourself
should do so. You are so perfect that you deserve to win the heart of every
honourable man in the world, yet you are contemned and forsaken by him
for whose sake you have scorned all others.”

6 The above sentence being omitted in the MS. followed in
this edition, it has been supplied from MS. No. 1520 in the
Bibliothèque Nationale.—L.

On hearing these words the Queen was so greatly moved that, for fear
of showing in her countenance the trouble of her mind, she took the
gentleman’s arm and went forth into a garden that was close to her
apartment. There she walked to and fro for a long time without being able
to say a word to him. The gentleman saw that she was half won, and when
they were at the end of the path, where none could see them, he made a
very full declaration of the love which he had so long hidden from her.
They found that they were of one mind in the matter, and enacted (7) the
vengeance which they were no longer able to forego. Moreover, they there
agreed that whenever the husband went into the country, and the King left
the castle to visit the wife in the town, the gentleman should always return
and come to the castle to see the Queen. Thus, the deceivers being
themselves deceived, all four would share in the pleasures that two of them
had thought to keep to themselves.

7 This expression has allusion to the mysteries or religious
plays so frequently performed in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. The Mystery of Vengeance, which depicted the
misfortunes which fell upon those who had taken part in the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ, such as Pontius Pilate, &c, and
ended by the capture and destruction of Jerusalem, properly
came after the Mysteries of the Passion and the
Resurrection.—L.

When the agreement had been made, the Queen returned to her
apartment and the gentleman to his house, both being so well pleased that
they had forgotten all their former troubles. The jealousy they had
previously felt at the King’s visits to the lady was now changed to desire, so
that the gentleman went oftener than usual to his house in the country,
which was only half a league distant. As soon as the King was advised of
his departure, he never failed to go and see the lady; and the gentleman,
when night was come, betook himself to the castle to the Queen, where he
did duty as the King’s lieutenant, and so secretly that none ever discovered
it.
This manner of life lasted for a long time; but as the King was a person
of public condition, he could not conceal his love sufficiently well to
prevent it from coming at length to the knowledge of every one; and all
honourable people felt great pity for the gentleman, though divers malicious
youths were wont to deride him by making horns at him behind his back.
But he knew of their derision, and it gave him great pleasure, so that he
came to think as highly of his horns as of the King’s crown.
One day, however, the King and the gentleman’s wife, noticing a stag’s
head that was set up in the gentleman’s house, could not refrain in his
presence from laughing and saying that the head was suited to the house.
Soon afterwards the gentleman, who was no less spirited than the King,
caused the following words to be written over the stag’s head:—

“Io porto le corna, ciascun lo vede, Ma tal le porta che no lo
crede.” (8)

8 “All men may see the horns I’ve got, But one wears horns
and knows it not.”

When the King came again to the house, he observed these lines newly
written, and inquired their meaning of the gentleman, who said—
“If the King’s secret be hidden from the subject, it is not fitting that the
subject’s secret should be revealed to the King. Be content with knowing
that those who wear horns do not always have their caps raised from their
heads. Some horns are so soft that they never uncap one, and especially are
they light to him who thinks he has them not.”

The King perceived by these words that the gentleman knew
something of his own behaviour, but he never had any suspicion of the love
between him and the Queen; for the more pleased the latter was with the
life led by her husband, the more did she feign to be distressed by it. And so
on either side they lived in this love, until at last old age took them in hand.
“Here, ladies, is a story by which you may be guided, for, as I
willingly confess, it shows you that when your husbands give you bucks’
horns you can give them stags’ horns in return.”
“I am quite sure, Saffredent,” began Ennasuite laughing, “that if you
still love as ardently as you were formerly wont to do, you would submit to
horns as big as oak-trees if only you might repay them as you pleased.
However, now that your hair is growing grey, it is time to leave your desires
in peace.”
“Fair lady,” said Saffredent, “though I be robbed of hope by the
woman I love, and of ardour by old age, yet it lies not in my power to
weaken my inclination. Since you have rebuked me for so honourable a
desire, I give you my vote for the telling of the fourth tale, that we may see
whether you can bring forward some example to refute me.”
During this converse one of the ladies fell to laughing heartily,
knowing that she who took Saffredent’s words to herself was not so loved
by him that he would have suffered horns, shame, or wrong for her sake.
When Saffredent perceived that the lady who laughed understood him, he
was well satisfied and became silent, so that Ennasuite might begin; which
she did as follows—
“In order, ladies, that Saffredent and the rest of the company may
know that all ladies are not like the Queen he has spoken of, and that all
foolhardy and venturesome men do not compass their ends, I will tell you a
story in which I will acquaint you with the opinion of a lady who deemed
the vexation of failure in love to be harder of endurance than death itself.
However, I shall give no names, because the events are so fresh in people’s
minds that I should fear to offend some who are near of kin.”

[The Princess’s Lady of Honour hurrying to her Mistress’s Assistance]

TALE IV.

A young gentleman sought to discover whether the offer of
an honour-able love would be displeasing to his master’s
sister, a lady of the most illustrious lineage in Flanders,
who had been twice widowed, and was a woman of muck spirit.
Meeting with a reply contrary to his desires, he attempted
to possess her by force; but she resisted him successfully,
and by the advice of her lady of honour, without seeming to
take notice of his designs and efforts, gradually ceased to
regard him with the favour with which she had been wont to
treat him. Thus, by his foolhardy presumption, he lost the
honourable and habitual companionship which, more than
others, he had had with her.(1)

1 This story is historical, and the incidents must have
occurred between 1520 and 1525.—L.

There lived in the land of Flanders a lady of such high lineage, that
none more illustrious could be found. She was a widow, both her first and
second husbands being dead, and she had no children living. During her
widowhood she lived in retirement with her brother, by whom she was
greatly loved, and who was a very great lord and married to the daughter of
a King. This young Prince was a man much given to pleasure, fond of
hunting, pastimes, and women, as his youth inclined him. He had a wife,
however, who was of a very froward disposition, (2) and found no pleasure
in her husband’s pursuits; wherefore this Lord always took his sister along
with his wife, for she was a most joyous and pleasant companion, and
withal a discreet and honourable woman.
In this Lord’s household there was a gentleman who, for stature,
comeliness, and grace, surpassed all his fellows. This gentleman, (3)
perceiving that his master’s sister was of merry mood and always ready for
a laugh, was minded to try whether the offer of an honourable love would
be displeasing to her.

2 The young prince here mentioned is Francis I., who at
this period was between twenty-five and thirty years old.
The froward wife is Claude of France (daughter of Louis XII.

and Anne of Brittany), whom Francis married in 1514, and who
died of consumption at Blois ten years later, while the King
was on his way to conquer Milan. (See the Memoir of
Margaret, pp. xxvi. and xxxv.)—Ed.

3 According to Brantôme, the Lady of Flanders, the young
Prince’s sister, was Queen Margaret herself, and the
gentleman who paid court to her was William Gouffier, Lord
of Bonnivet, of Crevecoeur, Thois, and Querdes, and also a
favourite of Francis I., with whom he was brought up, and by
whom he was employed in all the great enterprises of the
time. Bonnivet became Admiral of France in 1517, and two
years later he was created governor of Dauphiné, and
guardian of the Dauphin’s person. He negotiated the peace
and alliance with Henry VIII., and arranged all the
preliminaries of the interview known as the Field of the
Cloth of Gold (1520). In 1521, says Anselme in his Histoire
Généalogique, Bonnivet became governor of Guienne,
commanded the army sent to Navarre, and captured Fontarabia.
In 1524 he was despatched to Italy as lieutenant-general,
and besieged Milan, but was repeatedly repulsed, and finally
fell back on the Ticino. He was killed at Pavia (February
24, 1525), and was largely responsible for that disastrous
defeat, having urged Francis I. to give battle, contrary to
the advice of the more experienced captains. Bonnivet, as
mentioned by Queen Margaret in this story, had the
reputation of being one of the handsomest men of his time.—
L.

He made this offer, but the answer that he received from her was
contrary to his desires. However, although her reply was such as beseemed
a Princess and a woman of true virtue, she readily pardoned his hardihood
for the sake of his comeliness and breeding, and let him know that she bore
him no ill-will for what he had said. But she charged him never to speak to
her after that fashion again; and this he promised, that he might not lose the
pleasure and honour of her conversation. Nevertheless, as time went on, his
love so increased that he forgot the promise he had made. He did not,
however, risk further trial of words, for he had learned by experience, and
much against his will, what virtuous replies she was able to make. But he
reflected that if he could take her somewhere at a disadvantage, she, being a
widow, young, lusty, and of a lively humour, would perchance take pity on
him and on herself.
To compass his ends, he told his master that excellent hunting was to
be had in the neighbourhood of his house, and that if it pleased him to
repair thither and hunt three or four stags in the month of May, he could

have no finer sport. The Lord granted the gentleman’s request, as much for
the affection he bore him as for the pleasure of the chase, and repaired to his
house, which was as handsome and as fairly ordered as that of the richest
gentleman in the land.
The Lord and his Lady were lodged on one side of the house, and she
whom the gentleman loved more than himself on the other. Her apartment
was so well arranged, tapestried above and matted below,(4) that it was
impossible to perceive a trap-door which was by the side of her bed, and
which opened into a room beneath, that was occupied by the gentleman’s
mother.(5)

4 In most palaces and castles at this period the walls were
covered with tapestry and the floors with matting. This
remark is necessary to enable one to understand Bonnivet’s
stratagem.—D.

5 Philippa de Montmorency, second wife of William Gouffier,
Lord of Boissy, who was Bonnivet’s father (Anselme’s
Histoire Généalogique, vol. vii. p. 880).—L.

She being an old lady, somewhat troubled by rheum, and fearful lest
the cough she had should disturb the Princess, made exchange of chambers
with her son. In the evening this old lady was wont to bring sweetmeats to
the Princess for her collation,(6) at which the gentleman was present; and
being greatly beloved by her brother and intimate with him, he was also
suffered to be present when she rose in the morning and when she retired to
bed, on which occasions he always found reasons for an increase of his
affection.

6 At that period the collation, as the supper was called,
was served at seven in the evening, shortly before the
curfew.—B. J.

Thus it came to pass that one evening he made the Princess stay up
very late, until at last, being desirous of sleep, she bade him leave her. He
then went to his own room, and there put on the handsomest and best-
scented shirt he had, and a nightcap so well adorned that nothing was
lacking in it. It seemed, to him, as he looked at himself in his mirror, that no
lady in the world could deny herself to one of his comeliness and grace. He
therefore promised himself a happy issue to his enterprise, and so lay down

on his bed, where in his desire and sure hope of exchanging it for one more
honourable and pleasant, he looked to make no very long stay.
As soon as he had dismissed all his attendants he rose to fasten the
door after them; and for a long time he listened to hear whether there were
any sound in the room of the Princess, which was above his own. When he
had made sure that all was quiet, he wished to begin his pleasant task, and
little by little let down the trap-door, which was so excellently wrought, and
so well covered with cloth, that it made not the least noise. Then he
ascended into the room and came to the bedside of his lady, who was just
falling asleep.
Forthwith, having no regard for the duty that he owed his mistress or
for the house to which she belonged, he got into bed with her, without
entreating her permission or making any kind of ceremony. She felt him in
her arms before she knew that he had entered the room; but being strong,
she freed herself from his grasp, and fell to striking, biting, and scratching
him, demanding the while to know who he was, so that for fear lest she
should call out he sought to stop her mouth with the bedclothes. But this he
found it impossible to do, for when she saw that he was using all his
strength to work her shame she did as much to baffle him. She further
called as loudly as she could to her lady of honour,(7) who slept in her
room; and this old and virtuous woman ran to her mistress in her nightdress.

7 The lady in question was Blanche de Tournon, daughter of
James de Tournon, by Jane de Polignac, and sister of
Cardinal de Tournon, Minister of Francis I. She first
married Raymond d’Agout, Baron of Sault in Provence, who
died in 1503; and secondly James de Chastillon, Chamberlain
to Charles VIII. and Louis XII., killed at the siege of
Ravenna in 1512. Brantôme states, moreover, that she
subsequently married Cardinal John du Bellay. (See Appendix
to the’present volume, C.) In this story, Margaret describes
the Princess of Flanders as having lost two husbands, with
the view of disguising the identity of her heroine. Her own
husband (the Duke of Alençon) was still alive; but Madame de
Chastillon had twice become a widow, and the Queen, who was
well aware of this, designedly ascribed to the Princess the
situation of the lady of honour. This story should be
compared with the poem “Quatre Dames et Quatre
Gentilhommes” in the Marguerites de la Marguerite.—F.

When the gentleman saw that he was discovered, he was so fearful of
being recognised by the lady, that he descended in all haste through his
trap-door; his despair at returning in such an evil plight being no less than
his desire and assurance of a gracious reception had previously been. He
found his mirror and candle on his table,(8) and looking at his face, all
bleeding from the lady’s scratches and bites, whence the blood was trickling
over his fine shirt, which had now more blood than gold (9) about it, he said
—

8 It is not surprising that the mirror should have been
lying on the table. Mirrors were for a long time no larger
than our modern hand-glasses. That of Mary de’ Medici,
offered to her by the Republic of Venice, and now in the
Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre, is extremely small, though
it has an elaborate frame enriched with precious cameos.
Even the mirrors placed by Louis XIV. in the celebrated
Galerie des Glaces at Versailles were no larger than
ordinary window-panes.—M.

9 Shirts were then adorned at the collar and in front with
gold-thread embroidery, such as is shown in some of Clouet’s
portraits. In M. de Laborde’s Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi
au XVIème Siècle (vol. ii.) mention is made of “a shirt
with gold work,” “a shirt with white work,” &c.; and also of
two beautiful women’s chemises in Holland linen “richly
worked with gold thread and silk, at the price of six crowns
apiece.”—M.

“Beauty! now hast thou been rewarded according to thy deserts. By
reason of thy vain promises I attempted an impossible undertaking, and one
that, instead of increasing my happiness, will perchance double my
misfortune. I feel sure that if she knows I made this foolish attempt contrary
to the promise I gave her, I shall lose the honourable and accustomed
companionship which more than any other I have had with her. And my
folly has well deserved this, for if I was to turn my good looks and grace to
any account, I ought not to have hidden them in the darkness. I should not
have sought to take that chaste body by force, but should have waited in
long service and humble patience till love had conquered her. Without love,
all man’s merits and might are of no avail.”
Thus he passed the night in tears, regrets, and sorrowings such as I
cannot describe; and in the morning, finding his face greatly torn, he

feigned grievous sickness and to be unable to endure the light, until the
company had left his house.
The lady, who had come off victorious, knew that there was no man at
her brother’s Court that durst attempt such an enterprise save him who had
had the boldness to declare his love to her. She therefore concluded that it
was indeed her host, and made search through the room with her lady of
honour to discover how he could have entered it. But in this she failed,
whereupon she said to her companion in great anger—
“You may be sure that it can have been none other than the lord of this
house, and I will make such report of him to my brother in the morning that
his head shall bear witness to my chastity.”
Seeing her in such wrath, the lady of honour said to her—
“Right glad am I, madam, to find you esteem your honour so highly
that, to exalt it, you would not spare the life of a man who, for the love he
bears you, has put it to this risk. But it often happens that one lessens what
one thinks to increase; wherefore, I pray you, madam, tell me the truth of
the whole matter.”
When the lady had fully related the business, the lady of honour said to
her—
“You assure me that he had nothing from you save only scratches and
blows?”
“I do assure you that it was so,” said the lady; “and, unless he find a
rare surgeon, I am certain his face will bear the marks tomorrow.”
“Well, since it is thus, madam,” said the lady of honour, “it seems to
me that you have more reason to thank God than to think of vengeance; for
you may well believe that, since the gentleman had spirit enough to make
such an attempt, his grief at having failed will be harder of endurance than
any death you could award him. If you desire to be revenged on him, let
love and shame do their work; they will torment him more grievously than
could you. And if you would speak out for your honour’s sake,(10) beware,
madam, lest you fall into a mishap like to his own.

10 In Boaistuau’s edition this passage runs: “Let love and
shame do their work, they will know better than you how to
torment him; and do this for your honour’s sake. Beware,”
&c.—L.

He, instead of obtaining the greatest delight he could imagine, has
encountered the gravest vexation any gentleman could endure. So you,
madam, thinking to exalt your honour, may perchance diminish it. If you
make complaint, you will bring to light what is known to none, for you may
rest assured that the gentleman on his side will never reveal aught of the
matter. And even if my lord, your brother, should do justice to him at your
asking, and the poor gentleman should die, yet would it everywhere be
noised abroad that he had had his will of you, and most people would say it
was unlikely a gentleman would make such an attempt unless the lady had
given him great encouragement. You are young and fair; you live gaily with
all; and there is no one at Court but has seen the kind treatment you have
shown to the gentleman whom you suspect. Hence every one will believe
that if he did this deed it was not without some fault on your side; and your
honour, for which you have never had to blush, will be freely questioned
wherever the story is related.”
On hearing the excellent reasoning of her lady of honour, the Princess
perceived that she spoke the truth, and that she herself would, with just
cause, be blamed on account of the close friendship which she had always
shown towards the gentleman. Accordingly she inquired of her lady of
honour what she ought to do.
“Madam,” replied the other, “since you are pleased to receive my
counsels, having regard for the affection whence they spring, it seems to me
you should be glad at heart to think that the most comely and gallant
gentleman I have ever seen was not able, whether by love or by force, to
turn you from the path of true virtue. For this, madam, you should humble
yourself before God, and confess that it was not through your own merit,
for many women who have led straighter lives than you have been
humiliated by men less worthy of love than he. And you should henceforth
be more than ever on your guard against proposals of love; for many have
the second time yielded to dangers which on the first occasion they were
able to avoid. Be mindful, madam, that love is blind, and that it makes
people blind in such wise that the way appears safest just when it is most
slippery. Further, madam, it seems to me that you should give no sign of
what has befallen you, whether to him or to any one else, and that if he
seeks to say anything on the matter, you should feign not to understand him.
In this way you will avoid two dangers, the one of vain-glory in the victory
you have won, and the other of recalling things so pleasant to the flesh that

at mention of them the chastest can only with difficulty avoid feeling some
sparks of the flame, though they strive their utmost to escape them. (11)

11 We here follow MS. No. 1520.—L.

Besides this, madam, in order that he may not think he has done
anything pleasing in your sight, I am of opinion you should little by little
withdraw the friendship you have been in the habit of showing him. In this
way he will know how much you scorn his rashness, and how great is your
goodness, since, content with the victory that God has given you, you seek
no further vengeance upon him. And may God give you grace, madam, to
continue in the virtue He has placed in your heart; and, knowing that all
good things come from Him, may you love and serve Him better than
before.”
The Princess determined to abide by the advice of her lady of honour,
and then fell asleep with joy as great as was the sadness of her waking
lover.
On the morrow, the lord, her brother, wishing to depart, inquired for
his host, and was told that he was too ill to bear the light or to hear any one
speak. The Prince was greatly astonished at this, and wished to go and see
the gentleman; however, learning that he was asleep, he would not awake
him, but left the house without bidding him farewell. He took with him his
wife and sister, and the latter, hearing the excuses sent by the gentleman,
who would not see the Prince or any of the company before their departure,
felt convinced that it was indeed he who had so tormented her, and that he
durst not let the marks which she had left upon his face be seen. And
although his master frequently sent for him, he did not return to Court until
he was quite healed of all his wounds, save only one—namely, that which
love and vexation had dealt to his heart.
When he did return, and found himself in presence of his victorious
foe, he could not but blush; and such was his confusion, that he who had
formerly been the boldest of all the company, was often wholly abashed
before her. Accordingly, being now quite certain that her suspicion was true,
she estranged herself from him little by little, though not so adroitly that he
did not perceive it; but he durst not give any sign for fear of meeting with
something still worse, and so he kept his love concealed, patiently enduring
the disgrace he had so well deserved.(12)

12 This story is referred to by Brantôme, both in his Vies
des Homines illustres et grands Capitaines français, and in
his Vies des Dames galantes. See Appendix to the
present volume (C. ).

“This, ladies, is a story which should be a warning to those who would
grasp at what does not belong to them, and which, further, should
strengthen the hearts of ladies, since it shows the virtue of this young
Princess, and the good sense of her lady of honour. If the like fortune
should befall any among you, the remedy has now been pointed out.”
“It seems to me,” said Hircan, “that the tall gentleman of whom you
have told us was so lacking in spirit as to be unworthy of being
remembered. With such an opportunity as that, he ought not to have
suffered any one, old or young, to baffle him in his enterprise. It must be
said, also, that his heart was not entirely filled with love, seeing that fear of
death and shame found place within it.”
“And what,” replied Nomerfide, “could the poor gentleman have done
with two women against him?”
“He ought to have killed the old one,” said Hircan, “and when the
young one found herself without assistance she would have been already
half subdued.”
“To have killed her!” said Nomerfide. “Then you would turn a lover
into a murderer? Since such is your opinion, it would indeed be a fearful
thing to fall into your hands.”
“If I had gone so far,” said Hircan, “I should have held it
dishonourable not to achieve my purpose.”
Then said Geburon—
“You think it strange that a Princess, bred in all honour, should prove
difficult of capture to one man. You should then be much more astonished
at a poor woman who escaped out of the hands of two.”
“Geburon,” said Ennasuite, “I give my vote to you to tell the fifth tale,
for I think you know something concerning this poor woman that will not
be displeasing to us.”
“Since you have chosen me,” said Geburon, “I will tell you a story
which I know to be true from having made inquiries concerning it on the
spot. By this story you will see that womanly sense and virtue are not in the

hearts and heads of Princesses alone, nor love and cunning in such as are
most often deemed to possess them.”

[The Boatwoman of Coulon outwitting the Friars]

TALE V.

Two Grey Friars, when crossing the river at the haven of
Coulon, sought to ravish the boatwoman who was taking them
over. She, however, being virtuous and Clever, so beguiled
them with words that, whilst promising to grant their
request, she deceived them and handed them over to justice.
They were then delivered up to their warden to receive such
punishment as they deserved.

At the haven of Coulon,(1) near Nyort, there lived a boatwoman who,
day or night, did nothing but convey passengers across the ferry.

1 The village of Coulon, in Poitou (department of the Deux-
Sèvres), lies within seven miles of Niort, on the Niortaise
Sevre, which at this point is extremely wide.—L.

Now it chanced that two Grey Friars from Nyort were crossing the
river alone with her, and as the passage is one of the longest in France, they
began to make love to her, that she might not feel dull by the way. She
returned them the answer that was due; but they, being neither fatigued by
their journeying, nor cooled by the water, nor put to shame by her refusal,
determined to take her by force, and, if she clamoured, to throw her into the
river. She, however, was as virtuous and clever as they were gross and
wicked, and said to them—
“I am not so ill-disposed as I seem to be, but I pray you grant me two
requests. You shall then see that I am more ready to give than you are to
ask.”
The friars swore to her by their good St. Francis that she could ask
nothing that they would not grant in order to have what they desired of her.
“First of all,” she said, “I require you both to promise on oath that you
will inform no man living of this matter.” This they promised right
willingly.
“Then,” she continued, “I would have you take your pleasure with me
one after the other, for it would be too great a shame for me to have to do

with one in presence of the other. Consider which of you will have me
first.”
They deemed her request a very reasonable one, and the younger friar
yielded the first place to the elder. Then, as they were drawing near a little
island, she said to the younger one—
“Good father, say your prayers here until I have taken your companion
to another island. Then, if he praises me when he comes back, we will leave
him here, and go away in turn together.”
The younger friar leapt out on to the island to await the return of his
comrade, whom the boat-woman took away with her to another island.
When they had reached the bank she said to him, pretending the while to
fasten her boat to a tree—
“Look, my friend, and see where we can place ourselves.”
The good father stepped on to the island to seek for a convenient spot,
but no sooner did she see him on land than she struck her foot against the
tree and went off with her boat into the open stream, leaving both the good
fathers to their deserts, and crying out to them as loudly as she could—
“Wait now, sirs, till the angel of God comes to console you; for you
shall have nought that could please you from me to-day.”
The two poor monks, perceiving that they had been deceived, knelt
down at the water’s edge and besought her not to put them to such shame;
and they promised that they would ask nothing of her if she would of her
goodness take them to the haven. But, still rowing away, she said to them—
“I should be doubly foolish if, after escaping out of your hands, I were
to put myself into them again.”
When she had come to the village, she went to call her husband and
the ministers of justice that they might go and take these fierce wolves,
from whose fangs she had by the grace of God escaped. They set out
accompanied by many people, for there was no one, big or little, but wished
to share in the pleasure of this chase.
When the poor brethren saw such a large company approaching, they
hid themselves each in his island, even as Adam did when he perceived his
nakedness in the presence of God.(2) Shame set their sin clearly before
them, and the fear of punishment made them tremble so that they were half

dead. Nevertheless, they were taken prisoners amid the mockings and
hootings of men and women.
Some said, “These good fathers preach chastity to us and then rob our
wives of theirs.” (3)

2 See Genesis iii. 8-10.

3 The editions of 1558 and 1560 here contain this
additional phrase: “They do not dare to touch money with
bare hands, and yet they willingly finger the thighs of our
wives, which are more dangerous.”—L.

Others said, “They are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed
appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and
uncleanness.” (4) Then another voice cried, “By their fruits shall ye know
what manner of trees they are.” (5)
You may be sure that all the passages in the Gospel condemning
hypocrites were brought forward against the unhappy prisoners, who were,
however, rescued and delivered by their Warden,(6) who came in all haste
to claim them, assuring the ministers of justice that he would visit them
with a greater punishment than laymen would venture to inflict, and that
they should make reparation by saying as many masses and prayers as
might be required. The judge granted the Warden’s request and gave the
prisoners up to him; and the Warden, who was an upright man, so dealt with
them that they never afterwards crossed a river without making the sign of
the cross and recommending themselves to God.(7)

4 St. Matthew xxiii. 27.

5 “For every tree is known by his own fruit.”—St. Luke vi.
45.

6 The Father Superior of the Grey Friars was called the
Warden.—B.J.

7 Henry Etienne quotes this story in his Apologie pour
Hérodote, and praises the Queen for thus denouncing the
evil practices of the friars.—F.

“I pray you, ladies, consider, since this poor boatwoman had the wit to
deceive two such evil men, what should be done by those who have read of

and witnessed so many fair examples, and who have had the goodness of
virtuous ladies ever before their eyes? Indeed, the virtue of well-bred
women is not so much to be called virtue as habit. It is in the women who
know nothing, who hear scarcely two good sermons during the whole year,
who have no leisure to think of aught save the gaining of their miserable
livelihood, and who nevertheless jealously guard their chastity, hard-
pressed as they may be (8)—it is in such women as these that one discovers
the virtue that is natural to the heart. Where man’s wit and might are
smallest, there the Spirit of God performs the greatest work. And unhappy
indeed is the lady who keeps not close ward over the treasure which brings
her so much honour if it be well guarded, and so much shame if it be
neglected.”

8 Boaistuau’s edition of 1558 here contains the following
interpolation: “As should be done by those who, having their
lives provided for, have no occupation save that of studying
Holy Writ, listening to sermons and preaching, and exerting
themselves to act virtuously in all things.”—L.

“It seems to me, Geburon,” said Longarine, “that there is no great
virtue in refusing a Grey Friar, and that it would rather be impossible to
love one.”
“Longarine,” replied Geburon, “they who are not accustomed to such
lovers as yours do by no means despise the Grey Friars, for the latter are as
handsome and as strong as we are, and they are readier and fresher also, for
we are worn-out with our service. Moreover, they talk like angels and are as
importunate as the devil, so that such women as have never seen other robes
than their coarse drugget ones,(9) are truly virtuous when they escape out of
their hands.”

9 Meaning who have never seen gallants in gay apparel.—Ed.

“In faith,” said Nomerfide, in a loud voice, “you may say what you
like, but I would rather be thrown into the river than lie with a Grey Friar.‘’
“So you can swim well?” said Oisille, laughing.
Nomerfide took this question in bad part, for she thought that she was
esteemed by Oisille less highly than she desired. Accordingly she answered
in anger—

“There are some who have refused more agreeable men than Grey
Friars without blowing a trumpet about it.”
Oisille laughed to see her so wrathful, and said to her—
“Still less do they beat a drum about what they have done and
granted.”
“I see,” said Geburon, “that Nomerfide wishes to speak. I therefore
give her my vote that she may relieve her heart in telling us some excellent
story.”
“What has just been said,” replied Nomerfide, “touches me so little
that it affords me neither pleasure nor pain. However, since I have your
vote, I pray you listen to me whilst I show that, although one woman used
cunning for a good purpose, others have been crafty for evil’s sake. Since
we have sworn to tell the truth I will not hide it, for just as the boatwoman’s
virtue brings no honour to other women unless they follow her example, so
the vice of another cannot disgrace her. Wherefore, listen.”

[The Wife’s Ruse to secure the Escape of her Lover]

TALE VI.

An old one-eyed valet in the service of the Duke of Alençon
being advised that his wife was in love with a young man,
desired to know the truth, and feigned to go away into the
country for a few days. He returned, however, so suddenly
that his wife, on whom he was keeping watch, perceived how
matters stood, and whilst thinking to deceive her, he was
himself deceived.

There was in the service of Charles, last Duke of Alençon, an old valet
who had lost an eye, and who was married to a wife much younger than
himself. Now, since his master and mistress liked him as well as any man of
his condition that was in their service, he was not able to visit his wife as
often as he could have wished. Owing to this she so far forgot her honour
and conscience as to fall in love with a young man, and the affair being at
last noised abroad, the husband heard of it. He could not believe it,
however, on account of the many notable tokens of love that were shown
him by his wife.
Nevertheless, he one day determined to put the matter to the test, and
to take revenge, if he were able, on the woman who had put him to such
shame. For this purpose he pretended to go away to a place a short distance
off for the space of two or three days.
As soon as he was gone, his wife sent for her lover, but he had not
been with her for half-an-hour when the husband arrived and knocked
loudly at the door. The wife well knew who it was and told her lover, who
was so greatly confounded that he would fain have been in his mother’s
womb, and cursed both his mistress and the love that had brought him into
such peril. However, she bade him fear nothing, for she would devise a
means to get him away without harm or shame to him, and she told him to
dress himself as quickly as he could. All this time the husband was
knocking at the door and calling to his wife at the top of his voice; but she
feigned not to recognise him, and cried out to the people of the house—
“Why do you not get up and silence those who are making such a
clamour at the door? Is this an hour to come to the houses of honest folk? If

my husband were here he would soon make them desist.”
On hearing his wife’s voice the husband called to her as loudly as he
could—
“Wife, open the door. Are you going to keep me waiting here till
morning?”
Then, when she saw that her lover was ready to set forth, she opened
the door.
“Oh, husband!” she began, “how glad I am that you are come. I have
just had a wonderful dream, and was so pleased that I never before knew
such delight, for it seemed to me that you had recovered the sight of your
eye.” (1)

1 This is taken from No. xvi. of the Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles, in which the wife exclaims: “Verily, at the very
moment when you knocked, my lord, I was greatly occupied
with a dream about you.”—“And what was it, sweetheart?”
asks the husband.—“By my faith, my lord,” replies the wife,
“it really seemed to me that you were come back, that you
were speaking to me, and that you saw as clearly with one
eye as with the other.”—Ed.

Then, embracing and kissing him, she took him by the head and
covering his good eye with one hand, she asked him—
“Do you not see better than you did before?”
At that moment, whilst he saw not a whit, she made her lover sally
forth. The husband immediately suspected the trick, and said to her—
“‘Fore God, wife, I will keep watch on you no more, for in thinking to
deceive you, I have myself met with the cunningest deception that ever was
devised. May God mend you, for it is beyond the power of man to put a
stop to the maliciousness of a woman, unless by killing her outright.
However, since the fair treatment I have accorded you has availed nothing
for your amendment, perchance the scorn I shall henceforward hold you in
will serve as a punishment.”
So saying he went away, leaving his wife in great distress.
Nevertheless by the intercession of his friends and her own excuses and
tears, he was persuaded to return to her again.(2)

2 Although Queen Margaret ascribes the foregoing adventure
to one of the officers of her husband’s household, and
declares that the narrative is quite true, the same subject
had been dealt with by most of the old story-tellers prior
to her time, and Deslongchamps points out the same incidents
even in the early Hindoo fables (see the Pantcha Tantra,
book I., fable vi.). A similar tale is to be found in the
Gesta Romanorum (cap. cxxii.), in the fabliaux collected
by Legrand d’Aussy (vol. iv., “De la mauvaise femme”), in P.
Alphonse’s Disciplina Clericalis (fab. vii.), in the
Decameron (day vii., story vi.), and in the Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles (story xvi.). Imitations are also to be
found in Bandello (part i., story xxiii.), Malespini (story
xliv.), Sansovino (Cento Novelle), Sabadino (Novelle),
Etienne (Apologiepour Hérodote, ch. xv. ), De la Monnoye
(vol. ii.), D’Ouville (Contes, vol. ii.), &c.—L. & B. J.

“By this tale, ladies, you may see how quick and crafty a woman is in
escaping from danger. And if her wit be quick to discover the means of
concealing a bad deed, it would, in my belief, be yet more subtle in
avoiding evil or in doing good; for I have always heard it said that wit to do
well is ever the stronger.”
“You may talk of your cunning as much as you please,” said Hircan,
“but my opinion is that had the same fortune befallen you, you could not
have concealed the truth.”
“I had as lief you deemed me the most foolish woman on earth,” she
replied.
“I do not say that,” answered Hircan, “but I think you more likely to be
confounded by slander than to devise some cunning means to silence it.”
“You think,” said Nomerfide, “that every one is like you, who would
use one slander for the patching of another; but there is danger lest the
patch impair what it patches and the foundation be so overladen that all be
destroyed. However, if you think that the subtlety, of which all believe you
to be fully possessed, is greater than that found in women, I yield place to
you to tell the seventh story; and, if you bring yourself forward as the hero,
I doubt not that we shall hear wickedness enough.”
“I am not here,” replied Hircan, “to make myself out worse than I am;
there are some who do that rather more than is to my liking.”
So saying he looked at his wife, who quickly said—

“Do not fear to tell the truth on my account. I can more easily bear to
hear you relate your crafty tricks than to see them played before my eyes,
though none of them could lessen the love I bear you.”
“For that reason,” replied Hircan, “I make no complaint of all the false
opinions you have had of me. And so, since we understand each other, there
will be more security for the future. Yet I am not so foolish as to relate a
story of myself, the truth of which might be vexatious to you. I will tell you
one of a gentleman who was among my dearest friends.”

[The Merchant transferring his Caresses from the Daughter to the
Mother]

TALE VII.

By the craft and subtlety of a merchant an old woman was
deceived and the honour of her daughter saved.

In the city of Paris there lived a merchant who was in love with a
young girl of his neighbourhood, or, to speak more truly, she was more in
love with him than he with her. For the show he made to her of love and
devotion was but to conceal a loftier and more honourable passion.
However, she suffered herself to be deceived, and loved him so much that
she had quite forgotten the way to refuse.
After the merchant had long taken trouble to go where he could see
her, he at last made her come whithersoever it pleased himself. Her mother
discovered this, and being a very virtuous woman, she forbade her daughter
ever to speak to the merchant on pain of being sent to a nunnery. But the
girl, whose love for the merchant was greater than her fear of her mother,
went after him more than ever.
It happened one day, when she was in a closet all alone, the merchant
came in to her, and finding himself in a place convenient for the purpose,
fell to conversing with her as privily as was possible. But a maid-servant,
who had seen him go in, ran and told the mother, who betook herself thither
in great wrath. When the girl heard her coming, she said, weeping, to the
merchant—“Alas! sweetheart, the love that I bear you will now cost me
dear. Here comes my mother, who will know for certain what she has
always feared and suspected.”
The merchant, who was not a bit confused by this accident,
straightway left the girl and went to meet the mother. Stretching out his
arms, he hugged her with all his might, and, with the same ardour with
which he had begun to entertain the daughter, threw the poor old woman on
to a small bed. She was so taken aback at being thus treated that she could
find nothing to say but—“What do you want? Are you dreaming?”
For all that he ceased not to press her as closely as if she had been the
fairest maiden in the world, and had she not cried out so loudly that her

serving-men and women came to her aid, she would have gone by the same
road as she feared her daughter was treading.
However, the servants dragged the poor old woman by main force out
of the merchant’s arms, and she never knew for what reason he had thus
used her. Meanwhile, her daughter took refuge in a house hard by where a
wedding was going on. Since then she and the merchant have ofttimes
laughed together at the expense of the old woman, who was never any the
wiser.
“By this story, ladies, you may see how, by the subtlety of a man, an
old woman was deceived and the honour of a young one saved. Any one
who would give the names, or had seen the merchant’s face and the
consternation of the old woman, would have a very tender conscience to
hold from laughing. It is sufficient for me to prove to you by this story that
a man’s wit is as prompt and as helpful at a pinch as a woman’s, and thus to
show you, ladies, that you need not fear to fall into men’s hands. If your
own wit should fail you, you will find theirs prepared to shield your
honour.”
“In truth, Hircan,” said Longarine, “I grant that the tale is a very
pleasant one and the wit great, but the example is not such as maids should
follow. I readily believe there are some whom you would fain have approve
it, but you are not so foolish as to wish that your wife, or her whose honour
you set higher than her pleasure,(1) should play such a game. I believe there
is none who would watch them more closely or shield them more readily
than you.”

1 M. Frank, adopting the generally received opinion that
Hircan is King Henry of Navarre, believes this to be an
allusion to one of the King’s sisters—Ann, who married the
Count of Estrac, or Isabel, who married M. de Rohan—but it
is more likely that Henry’s daughter, Jane d’Albret, is the
person referred to.—Ed.

“By my conscience,” said Hircan, “if she whom you mention had done
such a thing, and I knew nothing about it, I should think none the less of
her. For all I know, some one may have played as good a trick on me;
however, knowing nothing, I am unconcerned.”
At this Parlamente could not refrain from saying—

“A wicked man cannot but be suspicious; happy are those who give no
occasion for suspicion.”
“I have never seen a great fire from which there came no smoke,” said
Longarine, “but I have often seen smoke where there was no fire. The
wicked are as suspicious when there is no mischief as when there is.”
“Truly, Longarine,” Hircan forthwith rejoined, “you have spoken so
well in support of the honour of ladies wrongfully suspected, that I give you
my vote to tell the eighth tale. I hope, however, that you will not make us
weep, as Madame Oisille did, by too much praise of virtuous women.”
At this Longarine laughed heartily, and thus began:—“You want me to
make you laugh, as is my wont, but it shall not be at women’s expense. I
will show you, however, how easy it is to deceive them when they are
inclined to be jealous and esteem themselves clever enough to deceive their
husbands.”

APPENDIX.

A. (Prologue, Page 31.)
The dedication with which Anthony Le Maçon prefaces his translation
of Boccaccio contains several curious passages. In it Margaret is styled “the
most high and most illustrious Princess Margaret of France, only sister of
the King, Queen of Navarre, Duchess of Alençon and of Berry;” while the
author describes himself as “Master Anthoine Le Maçon, Councillor of the
King, Receiver General of his finances in Burgundy, and very humble
secretary to this Queen.” He then proceeds to say:—
“You remember, my lady, the time when you made a stay of four or
five months in Paris, during which you commanded me, seeing that I had
freshly arrived from Florence, where I had sojourned during an entire year,
to read to you certain stories of the Decameron of Boccaccio, after which it
pleased you to command me to translate the whole book into our French
language, assuring me that it would be found beautiful and entertaining. I
then made you reply that I felt my powers were too weak to undertake such
a work.... My principal and most reasonable excuse was the knowledge that
I had of myself, being a native of the land of Dauphiné, where the maternal
language is too far removed from good French.... However, it did not please
you to accept any of my excuses, and you showed me that it was not fitting
that the Tuscans should be so mistaken as to believe that their Boccaccio
could not be rendered in our language as well as it is in theirs, ours having
become so rich and so copious since the accession of the King, your
brother, to the crown, that nothing has ever been written in any language
that could not be expressed in this; and thus your will still was that I should
translate it (the Decameron) when I had the leisure to do so. Seeing this and
desiring, throughout my life, to do, if I can, even more than is possible to
obey you, I began some time afterwards to translate one of the said stories,
then two, then three, and finally to the number of ten or twelve, the best that
I could choose, which I afterwards showed as much to people of the Tuscan
nation as to people of ours, who all made me believe that the stories were, if
not perfectly, at least very faithfully translated. Wherefore, allowing myself
to be thus pleasantly deceived, if deceit there was, I have since set myself to
begin the translation at one end and to finish it at the other....”

This dedicatory preface is followed by an epistle, written in Italian by
Emilio Ferretti, and dated from Lyons, May I, 1545; and by a notice to the
reader signed by Etienne Rosset, the bookseller, who in the King’s license,
dated from St. Germain-en-Laye, Nov. 2, 1544, is described as “Rosset
called the Mower, bookseller, residing in Paris, on the bridge of St.
Michael, at the sign of the White Rose.” The first edition of Le Maçon’s
translation (1545) was in folio; the subsequent ones of 1548, 1551, and
1553 being in octavo. It should be remembered that Le Maçon’s was by no
means the first French version of the Decameron. Laurent du Premier-Faict
had already rendered Boccaccio’s masterpiece into French in the reign of
Charles VI., but unfortunately his translation, although of a pleasing
naïveté, was not at all correct, having been made from a Latin version of the
original. Manuscript copies of Laurent’s translation were to be found in the
royal and most of the princely libraries of the fifteenth century.—Ed.

B. (Tale I., Page 50.)
The letters of remission which at the instance of Henry VIII. were
granted to Michael de St. Aignan in respect of the murder of James du
Mesnil are preserved in the National Archives of France (Register J. 234,
No. 191), and after the usual preamble, recite the culprit’s petition in these
terms:—
“Whereas it appears from the prayer of Michael de St. Aignan, lord of
the said place, (1) that heretofore he for a long time lived and resided in the
town of Alençon in honour and good repute; but, to the detriment of his
prosperity, life, and conduct there were divers evil-minded and envious
persons who by sinister, cunning, and hidden means persecuted him with all
the evils, wiles, and deceits that it is possible to conceive, albeit the said
suppliant had never caused them displeasure, injury, or detriment; among
others, one named James Dumesnil, a young man, to whom the said
suppliant had procured all the pleasure and advantages that were in his
power, and whom he had customarily admitted to his house, thinking that
the said Dumesnil was his loyal friend, and charging his wife and his
servants to treat him when he came as though he were his brother; by which
means St. Aignan hoped to induce the said Dumesnil to espouse one of his
relatives.

1 This was in all probability the village of St. Aignan on
the Sarthe, between Moulins-la-Marche and Bazoches, and
about twenty miles from Alençon. The personage here
mentioned should not be confounded with Emery de
Beauvilliers, whom Francis I. created Count of St. Aignan
(on the Cher), and whose descendants, many of whom were
distinguished generals and diplomatists, became dukes of the
same place.—Ed.

“But Dumesnil ill-requited the aforesaid good services and courtesies,
and rendering evil for good, as is the practice of iniquity, endeavoured to
and did cause an estrangement between the said St. Aignan and his wife,
who had always lived together in good, great, and perfect affection. And the
better to effect his purpose he (Dumesnil) gave the said wife to understand,

among other things, that St. Aignan bore her no affection; that he daily
desired her death; that she was mistaken in trusting him; and other evil
things not fitting to be repeated, which the wife withstood, enjoining
Dumesnil not to use such language again, as should he do so she would
repeat it to her husband; but Dumesnil, persevering, on divers occasions
when St. Aignan had absented himself, gave the wife of the latter to
understand that he (St. Aignan) was dead, devising proofs thereof and
conjectures, and thinking that by this means he would win her favour and
countenance. But she still resisted him, which seeing, the said Dumesnil
gave her to understand that St. Aignan would often absent himself, and that
she would be happier if she had a husband who remained with her. And
plotting to compass the death of the said St. Aignan, Dumesnil gave her to
understand that if she would consent to the death of her husband he would
marry her; and, in fact, he promised to marry her. And whereas she still
refused to consent, the said Dumesnil found a means to gain a servant
woman of the house, who, St. Aignan being absent and his wife in bed,
opened the door to Dumesnil, who compelled the said wife to let him lie
with her. And thenceforward Dumesnil made divers presents to the servant
woman, so that she should poison the said suppliant; and she consented to
his face; but at Easter confessed the matter to St. Aignan, entreating his
forgiveness, and also saying and declaring it to the neighbours. And the said
Dumesnil, knowing that he would incur blame and reproach if the matter
were brought forward, seized and abducted the said servant woman in all
diligence, and took her away from the town, whereby a scandal was
occasioned.
“Moreover, it would appear that the said Dumesnil had been found
several times by night watching the gardens and the door in view of slaying
St. Aignan, as is notorious in Alençon, by virtue of the admission of the said
Dumesnil himself. Whereupon St. Aignan, seeing his wife thus made the
subject of scandal by Dumesnil, enjoined him to abstain from coming to his
house to see his wife, and to consider the outrage and injury he had already
inflicted upon him; declaring moreover that he could endure no more. To
which Dumesnil refused to listen, declaring that he would frequent the
house in spite of every one; albeit, in doing so, he might come by his death.
Thereupon St. Aignan, being acquainted with the evil obstinacy of
Dumesnil and desirous of avoiding greater misfortune, departed from the
town of Alençon, and went to reside in the town of Argentan, ten leagues

distant, whither he took his wife, thinking that Dumesnil would abstain
from coming. Withal he did not abstain, but came several times to the said
town of Argentan, and frequented his (St. Aignan’s) wife; whereby the
people of Argentan were scandalised. And the said St. Aignan endeavoured
to prevent him from coming, and employed the nurse of his child to
remonstrate with Dumesnil, but the latter persevered, saying and declaring
that he would kill St. Aignan, and would still go to Argentan, albeit it might
cause his death. Insomuch that the said Dumesnil, on the eighth day of this
month, departed from Alençon between two and three o’clock in the
morning, a suspicious hour, having disguised himself and assumed attire
unsuited to his calling, which is that of the law; wearing a Bearnese cloak,
(2) a jacket of white woollen stuff underneath, all torn into strips, with a
feathered cap upon his head, and having his face covered. In this wise he
arrived at the said town of Argentan, accompanied by two young men, and
lodged in the faubourgs at the sign of Notre Dame, and remained there
clandestinely from noon till about eleven o’clock in the evening, when he
asked the host for the key of the backdoor, so that he might go out on his
private affairs, not wishing to be recognised.
“At the said suspicious hour, with his sword at his side,(3) and dressed
and accoutred in the said garments, he started from his lodging with one of
the said young men.

2 See ante, p. 24, note 8.

3 The French word is basion, which in the sixteenth
century was often used to imply a sword; arquebuses and
musketoons being termed basions à feu by way of
distinction. Moreover, it is expressly stated farther on
that Dumesnil had a sword.—Ed.

“In this wise Dumesnil reached the house of St. Aignan, which he
found a means of entering, and gained a closet up above, near the room
where the said St. Aignan and his wife slept. St. Aignan was without
thought of this, inasmuch as he was ignorant of the enterprise of the said
Dumesnil, being in the living room with one Master Thomas Guérin, who
had come upon business. Now, as St. Aignan was disposing himself to go to
bed, he told one of his servants, named Colas, to bring him his cas (4) and
the servant having occasion to go up into a closet in which St. Aignan’s
wife was sleeping, and in which the said Dumesnil was concealed, the

latter, fearing that he might be recognised, suddenly came out with a drawn
sword in his hand; whereupon the said Colas cried: ‘Help! There is a
robber!’ And he declared to St. Aignan that he had seen a strange man who
did not seem to be there for any good purpose; whereupon St. Aignan said
to him: ‘One must find out who it is. Is there occasion for any one to come
here at this hour?’ Thereupon Colas went after the said personage, whom he
found in a little alley near the courtyard behind the house; and the said
personage, having suddenly perceived Colas, endeavoured to strike him on
the body with his weapon; but Colas withstood him and gave him a few
blows,(5) for which reason he cried out ‘Help! Murder!’ Thereupon St.
Aignan arrived, having a sword in his hand; and after him came the said
Guérin. St. Aignan, who as yet did not know Dumesnil on account of his
disguise, and also because it was wonderfully dark, found him calling out:
‘Murder! Confession!’ By which cry the said St. Aignan knew him, and was
greatly perplexed, astonished, and angered, at seeing his enemy at such an
hour in his house, he having been found there, with a weapon, in the closet.
And the said St. Aignan recalling to memory the trouble and worry that
Dumesnil had caused him, dealt him two or three thrusts in hot anger, and
then said to him: ‘Hey! Wretch that thou art, what hast brought thee here?
Wert thou not content with the wrong thou didst me in coming here
previously? I never did thee an ill office.’ Whereupon the said Dumesnil
said: ‘It is true, I have too grievously offended you, and am too wicked; I
entreat your pardon.’ And thereupon he fell to the ground as if dead; which
seeing, the said St. Aignan, realising the misfortune that had happened, said
not a word, but recommended himself to God and withdrew into his room,
where he found his wife in bed, she having heard nothing.

4 The en cas was a kind of light supper provided in case
one felt hungry at night-time. Most elaborate en cas,
consisting of several dishes, were frequently provided for
the kings of France.—Ed.

5 In the story Margaret asserts that it was Thomas Guérin
who attacked Dumesnil.—D.

“On the night of the said dispute, and a little later, St. Aignan went to
see what the said Dumesnil was doing, and finding him in the courtyard
dead, he helped to carry him into the stable, being too greatly incensed to
act otherwise. And upon the said Colas asking him what should be done

with the body, St. Aignan paid no heed to this question, because he was not
master of himself; but merely said to Colas that he might do as he thought
fit, and that the body might be interred in consecrated ground or placed in
the street. After which St. Aignan withdrew into his room and slept with his
wife, who had her maids with her. And on the morrow this same Colas
declared to St. Aignan that he had taken the said body to be buried, so as to
avoid a scandal. To all of which things St. Aignan paid no heed, but on the
morrow sent to fetch the two young men in the service of the said
Dumesnil, who were at his lodging, and had the horses removed from the
said lodging, and gave orders to one of the young men to take them back.
“On account of all which occurrences he (St. Aignan) absented
himself, &c, &c, but humbly entreating us, &c, &c. Wherefore we now give
to the Bailiffs of Chartres and Caen, or to their Lieutenants, and to each of
them severally and to all, &c, &c. Given at Châtelherault, in the month of
July, the year of Grace, one thousand five hundred and twenty-six, and the
twelfth of our reign.
“Signed: By the King on the report of the Council:
“De Nogent.“Visa: contentor.
“De Nogent.”

It will be seen that the foregoing petition contains various
contradictory statements. The closet, for instance, is at
first described as being near the room in which St. Aignan
and his wife slept, then it is asserted that the wife slept
in the closet, but ultimately the husband is shown joining
his wife in the bed-chamber, where she had heard nothing.
The character of the narrative is proof of its falsity, and
Margaret’s account of the affair may readily be accepted as
the more correct one.—Ed.

C. (Tale IV., Page 85.)
Les Vies des Dames galantes contains the following passage bearing
upon Margaret’s 4th Tale. See Lalanne’s edition of Brantôme’s Works, vol.
ix. p. 678 et sec.:—
“I have heard a lady of great and ancient rank relate that the late
Cardinal du Bellay, whilst a Bishop and Cardinal, married Madame de
Chastillon, and died married; and this lady said it in conversing with
Monsieur de Manne, a Provençal of the house of Seulal, and Bishop of
Frejus, who had attended the said Cardinal during fifteen years at the Court
of Rome, and had been one of his private protonotaries. The conversation
turning upon the said Cardinal, this lady asked Monsieur de Manne if he
(the Cardinal) had ever said and confessed to him that he had been married.
It was Monsieur de Manne who was astonished at such a question. He is
still alive and can say if I am telling an untruth, for I was there. He replied
that he had never heard the matter spoken of either to himself or to others.
‘Then it is I who inform you of it,’ said she, ‘for nothing could be more true
but that he was married, and died really married to Madame de Chastillon.’
“I assure you that I laughed heartily, contemplating the astonished
countenance of Monsieur de Manne, who was most conscientious and
religious, and thought that he had known all the secrets of his late master;
but he was as ignorant as a Gibuan as regards that one, which was indeed
scandalous on account of the holy rank which he (Cardinal du Bellay) had
held.
“This Madame de Chastillon was the widow of the late Monsieur de
Chastillon, of whom it was said that he governed the little King Charles
VIII., with Bourdillon and Bonneval, who governed the royal blood. He
died at Ferrara, where he had been taken to have his wounds dressed,
having been wounded at the siege of Ravenna.
“This lady became a widow when very young and beautiful, and on
account of her being sensible and virtuous she was elected as lady of
honour to the late Queen of Navarre. It was she who gave that fine advice to
that lady and great princess, which is recorded in the hundred stories of the

said Queen—the story of herself and a gentleman who had slipped into her
bed during the night by a trap-door at the bedside, and who wished to enjoy
her, but only obtained by it some fine scratches upon his handsome face.
She (the Queen) wishing to complain to her brother, Madame de Chastillon
made her that fine remonstrance which will be seen in the story, and gave
her that beautiful advice which is one of the finest, most judicious, and most
fitting that could be given to avoid scandal: did it come even from a first
president of (the Parliament of) Paris. Yet it well showed that the lady was
quite as artful and shrewd in such secret matters as she was sensible and
prudent; and for this reason there is no need for doubt as to whether she
kept her affair with the Cardinal a secret. My grandmother, Madame la
Sénéchale of Poitou, had her place after her death, by election of King
Francis who chose and elected her, and sent to fetch her even in her house,
and gave her with his own hand to the Queen his sister, for he knew her to
be a very well-advised and very virtuous lady, but not so shrewd, or artful,
or ready-witted in such matters as her predecessor, or married either a
second time.
“And if you wish to know to whom the story applies, it is to the Queen
of Navarre herself and Admiral de Bonnivet, as I hold it from my late
grandmother; and yet it seems to me that the said Queen should not have
concealed her name, since the other could not obtain aught from her
chastity, but went off in confusion, and since she herself had meant to
divulge the matter had it not been for the fine and sensible remonstrance
which was made to her by the said lady of honour, Madame de Chastillon.
Whoever has read the story will find that she was a lady of honour, and I
think that the Cardinal, her said husband, who was one of the best speakers
and most learned, eloquent, wise, and shrewd men of his time, must have
instilled into her this science of speaking and remonstrating so well.”
Brantôme also refers to the story in question in his Vies des Hommes
illustres et grands Capitaines français (vol. ii. p. 162), wherein he says:—
“There is a tale in the stories of the Queen of Navarre, which speaks of
a lord, the favourite of a king, whom he invited with all his court to one of
his houses, where he made a trap-door in his room conducting to the
bedside of a great princess, in view of lying with her, as he did, but, as the
story relates, he obtained only scratches from her.”

END OF VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF
ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILISTS
Volume II. Volume III. Volume IV. Volume V.

THE TALES OF
THE HEPTAMERON

OF

Margaret, Queen of Navarre

Newly Translated into English from the Authentic Text

OF M. LE ROUX DE LINCY WITH

AN ESSAY UPON THE HEPTAMERON
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.

Also the Original Seventy-three Full Page Engravings
Designed by S. FREUDENBERG

And One Hundred and Fifty Head and Tail Pieces
By DUNKER

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE SECOND
LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH
BIBLIOPHILISTS
MDCCCXCIV

Volume I. Volume III. Volume IV. Volume V.

[Margaret, Queen of Navarre, from a crayon drawing by Clouet,
preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

Contents
FIRST DAY, Continued.
TALE VIII.
TALE IX.
TALE X.

SECOND DAY.
PROLOGUE.
TALE XI. (A).
TALE XI. (B).
TALE XII.
TALE XIII.
TALE XIV.
TALE XV.
TALE XVI.
TALE XVII.
TALE XVIII.

APPENDIX.
A. (Tale VIII., Page i.)
B (Tale XL (B.), Page 95.)

C. (Tale XII., Page 101.)
D. (Tale XVI., Page 183.)
E. (Tale XVII., Page 195.)

List of Illustrations
Frontispiece
Titlepage
001a.jpg Bornet’s Concern on Discovering That
his Wife Is Without Her Ring
001.jpg Page Image
012.jpg Tailpiece
013a.jpg the Dying Gentleman Receiving The
Embraces Of His Sweetheart
013.jpg Page Image
024.jpg Tailpiece
025a.jpg the Countess Asking an Explanation
from Amadour
025.jpg Page Image
083.jpg Tailpiece
089.jpg Page Image
093.jpg Tailpiece
095a.jpg the Grey Friar Telling his Tales
095.jpg Page Image
100.jpg Tailpiece
101a.jpg the Gentleman Killing The Duke
101.jpg Page Image

117.jpg Tailpiece
119a.jpg the Sea-captain Talking to The Lady
119.jpg Page Image
140.jpg Tailpiece
141a.jpg Bonnivet and the Lady of Milan
141.jpg Page Image
155.jpg Tailpiece
157a.jpg the Lady Taking Oath As to Her
Conduct
157.jpg Page Image
182.jpg Tailpiece
183a.jpg the Gentleman Discovering The Trick
183.jpg Page Image
193.jpg Tailpiece
195a.jpg the King Showing his Sword
195.jpg Page Image
203.jpg Tailpiece
205a.jpg the Student Escaping The Temptation
205.jpg Page Image
216.jpg Tailpiece

DETAILED CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
FIRST DAY—Continued.
Tale VIII. The misadventure of Bornet, who, planning with a
friend of
his that both should lie with a serving-woman, discovers too
late that
they have had to do with his own wife.

Tale IX. The evil fortune of a gentleman of Dauphiné, who
dies of
despair because he cannot marry a damsel nobler and
richer than himself.

Tale X. The Spanish story of Florida, who, after
withstanding the love
of a gentleman named Amadour for many years, eventually
becomes a nun.

SECOND DAY.
Prologue

Tale XI. (A). Mishap of the Lady de Roncex in the Grey
Friars’ Convent
at Thouars.

Tale XI. (B). Facetious discourse of a Friar of Touraine.

Tale XII. Story of Alexander de’ Medici, Duke of Florence,
whom his
cousin, Lorenzino de’ Medici, slew in order to save his
sister’s honour.

Tale XIII. Praiseworthy artifice of a lady to whom a sea
Captain sent
a letter and diamond ring, and who, by forwarding them to
the Captain’s
wife as though they had been intended for her, united
husband and wife
once more in all affection.

Tale XIV. The Lord of Bonnivet, after furthering the love
entertained
by an Italian gentleman for a lady of Milan, finds means to
take
the other’s place and so supplant him with the lady who had
formerly
rejected himself.

Tale XV. The troubles and evil fortune of a virtuous lady
who, after
being long neglected by her husband, becomes the object of
his jealousy.

Tale XVI. Story of a Milanese Countess, who, after long
rejecting the
love of a French gentleman, rewards him at last for his
faithfulness,
but not until she has put his courage to the proof.

Tale XVII. The noble manner in which King Francis the
First shows Count
William of Furstemberg that he knows of the plans laid by
him against
his life, and so compels him to do justice upon himself and to
leave
France.

Tale XVIII. A young gentleman scholar at last wins a lady’s
love, after

enduring successfully two trials that she had made of him.

Appendix to Vol. II

[Bornet’s Concern on discovering that his Wife is without her Ring]

TALE VIII.

A certain Bornet, less loyal to his wife than she to him,
desired to lie with his maidservant, and made his enterprise
known to a friend, who, hoping to share in the spoil, so
aided and abetted him, that whilst the husband thought to
lie with his servant he in truth lay with his wife. Unknown
to the latter, he then caused his friend to participate in
the pleasure which rightly belonged to himself alone, and
thus made himself a cuckold without there being any guilt on
the part of his wife. (1)

In the county of Alletz (2) there lived a man named Bornet, who being
married to an upright and virtuous wife, had great regard for her honour and
reputation, as I believe is the case with all the husbands here present in
respect to their own wives. But although he desired that she should be true
to him, he was not willing that the same law should apply to both, for he
fell in love with his maid-servant, from whom he had nothing to gain save
the pleasure afforded by a diversity of viands.

1 For a list of tales similar to this one, see post,
Appendix A.

2 Alletz, now Alais, a town of Lower Languedoc (department
of the Gard), lies on the Gardon, at the foot of the
Cevennes mountains. It was formerly a county, the title
having been held by Charles, Duke of Angoulême, natural son
of Charles IX.—M.

Now he had a neighbour of the same condition as his own, named
Sandras, a tabourer (3) and tailor by trade, and there was such friendship
between them that, excepting Bornet’s wife, they had all things in common.
It thus happened that Bornet told his friend of the enterprise he had in hand
against the maid-servant; and Sandras not only approved of it, but gave all
the assistance he could to further its accomplishment, hoping that he
himself might share in the spoil.

3 Tabourers are still to be found in some towns of Lower

Languedoc and in most of those of Provence, where they
perambulate the streets playing their instruments. They are
in great request at all the country weddings and other
festive gatherings, as their instruments supply the
necessary accompaniment to the ancient Provençal dance, the
farandole.—Ed.

The maid-servant, however, was loth to consent, and finding herself
hard pressed, she went to her mistress, told her of the matter, and begged
leave to go home to her kinsfolk, since she could no longer endure to live in
such torment. Her mistress, who had great love for her husband and had
often suspected him, was well pleased to have him thus at a disadvantage,
and to be able to show that she had doubted him justly. Accordingly, she
said to the servant—
“Remain, my girl, but lead my husband on by degrees, and at last
make an appointment to lie with him in my closet. Do not fail to tell me on
what night he is to come, and see that no one knows anything about it.”
The maid-servant did all that her mistress had commanded her, and her
master in great content went to tell the good news to his friend. The latter
then begged that, since he had been concerned in the business, he might
have part in the result. This was promised him, and, when the appointed
hour was come, the master went to lie, as he thought, with the maid-servant;
but his wife, yielding up the authority of commanding for the pleasure of
obeying, had put herself in the servant’s place, and she received him, not in
the manner of a wife, but after the fashion of a frightened maid. This she
did so well that her husband suspected nothing.
I cannot tell you which of the two was the better pleased, he at the
thought that he was deceiving his wife, or she at really deceiving her
husband. When he had remained with her, not as long as he wished, but
according to his powers, which were those of a man who had long been
married, he went out of doors, found his friend, who was much younger and
lustier than himself, and told him gleefully that he had never met with better
fortune. “You know what you promised me,” said his friend to him.
“Go quickly then,” replied the husband, “for she may get up, or my
wife have need of her.”
The friend went off and found the supposed maid-servant, who,
thinking her husband had returned, denied him nothing that he asked of her,
or rather took, for he durst not speak. He remained with her much longer

than her husband had done, whereat she was greatly astonished, for she had
not been wont to pass such nights. Nevertheless, she endured it all with
patience, comforting herself with the thought of what she would say to him
on the morrow, and of the ridicule that she would cast upon him.
Towards daybreak the man rose from beside her, and toying with her
as he was going away, snatched from her finger the ring with which her
husband had espoused her, and which the women of that part of the country
guard with great superstition. She who keeps it till her death is held in high
honour, while she who chances to lose it, is thought lightly of as a person
who has given her faith to some other than her husband.
The wife, however, was very glad to have it taken, thinking it would be
a sure proof of how she had deceived her husband. When the friend
returned, the husband asked him how he had fared. He replied that he was
of the same opinion as himself, and that he would have remained longer had
he not feared to be surprised by daybreak. Then they both went to the
friend’s house to take as long a rest as they could. In the morning, while
they were dressing, the husband perceived the ring that his friend had on his
finger, and saw that it was exactly like the one he had given to his wife at
their marriage. He thereupon asked his friend from whom he had received
the ring, and when he heard he had snatched it from the servant’s finger, he
was confounded and began to strike his head against the wall, saying
—“Ah! good Lord! have I made myself a cuckold without my wife
knowing anything about it?”
“Perhaps,” said his friend in order to comfort him, “your wife gives
her ring into the maid’s keeping at night-time.”
The husband made no reply, but took himself home, where he found
his wife fairer, more gaily dressed, and merrier than usual, like one who
rejoiced at having saved her maid’s conscience, and tested her husband to
the full, at no greater cost than a night’s sleep. Seeing her so cheerful, the
husband said to himself—
“If she knew of my adventure she would not show me such a pleasant
countenance.”
Then, whilst speaking to her of various matters, he took her by the
hand, and on noticing that she no longer wore the ring, which she had never
been accustomed to remove from her finger, he was quite overcome.

“What have you done with your ring?” he asked her in a trembling
voice.
She, well pleased that he gave her an opportunity to say what she
desired, replied—
“O wickedest of men! From whom do you imagine you took it? You
thought it was from my maid-servant, for love of whom you expended more
than twice as much of your substance as you ever did for me. The first time
you came to bed I thought you as much in love as it was possible to be; but
after you had gone out and were come back again, you seemed to be a very
devil. Wretch! think how blind you must have been to bestow such praises
on my person and lustiness, which you have long enjoyed without holding
them in any great esteem. ‘Twas, therefore, not the maid-servant’s beauty
that made the pleasure so delightful to you, but the grievous sin of lust
which so consumes your heart and so clouds your reason that in the frenzy
of your love for the servant you would, I believe, have taken a she-goat in a
nightcap for a comely girl! Now, husband, it is time to amend your life, and,
knowing me to be your wife, and an honest woman, to be as content with
me as you were when you took me for a pitiful strumpet. What I did was to
turn you from your evil ways, so that in your old age we might live together
in true love and repose of conscience. If you purpose to continue your past
life, I had rather be severed from you than daily see before my eyes the ruin
of your soul, body, and estate. But if you will acknowledge the evil of your
ways, and resolve to live in fear of God and obedience to His
commandments, I will forget all your past sins, as I trust God will forget my
ingratitude in not loving Him as I ought to do.”
If ever man was reduced to despair it was this unhappy husband. Not
only had he abandoned this sensible, fair, and chaste wife for a woman who
did not love him, but, worse than this, he had without her knowledge made
her a strumpet by causing another man to participate in the leasure which
should have been for himself alone; and thus he had made himself horns of
everlasting derision. However, seeing his wife in such wrath by reason of
the love he had borne his maid-servant, he took care not to tell her of the
evil trick that he had played her; and entreating her forgiveness, with
promises of full amendment of his former evil life, he gave her back the
ring which he had recovered from his friend. He entreated the latter not to
reveal his shame; but, as what is whispered in the ear is always proclaimed

from the housetop, the truth, after a time, became known, and men called
him cuckold without imputing any shame to his wife.
“It seems to me, ladies, that if all those who have committed like
offences against their wives were to be punished in the same way, Hircan
and Saffredent would have great cause for fear.”
“Why, Longarine,” said Saffredent, “are none in the company married
save Hircan and I?”
“Yes, indeed there are others,” she replied, “but none who would play
a similar trick.”
“Whence did you learn,” asked Saffredent, “that we ever solicited our
wives’ maid-servants?”
“If the ladies who are in question,” said Longarine, “were willing to
speak the truth, we should certainly hear of maid-servants dismissed
without notice.”
“Truly,” said Geburon, “you are a most worthy lady! You promised to
make the company laugh, and yet are angering these two poor gentlemen.”
“Tis all one,” said Longarine: “so long as they do not draw their
swords, their anger will only serve to increase our laughter.”
“A pretty business indeed!” said Hircan. “Why, if our wives chose to
believe this lady, she would embroil the seemliest household in the
company.”
“I am well aware before whom I speak,” said Longarine. “Your wives
are so sensible and bear you so much love, that if you were to give them
horns as big as those of a deer, they would nevertheless try to persuade
themselves and every one else that they were chaplets of roses.”
At this the company, and even those concerned, laughed so heartily
that their talk came to an end. However, Dagoucin, who had not yet uttered
a word, could not help saying—
“Men are very unreasonable when, having enough to content
themselves with at home, they go in search of something else. I have often
seen people who, not content with sufficiency, have aimed at bettering
themselves, and have fallen into a worse position than they were in before.
Such persons receive no pity, for fickleness is always blamed.”

“But what say you to those who have not found their other half?”
asked Simontault. “Do you call it fickleness to seek it wherever it may be
found?”
“Since it is impossible,” said Dagoucin, “for a man to know the
whereabouts of that other half with whom there would be such perfect
union that one would not differ from the other, he should remain steadfast
wherever love has attached him. And whatsoever may happen, he should
change neither in heart nor in desire. If she whom you love be the image of
yourself, and there be but one will between you, it is yourself you love, and
not her.”
“Dagoucin,” said Hircan, “you are falling into error. You speak as
though we should love women without being loved in return.”
“Hircan,” replied Dagoucin, “I hold that if our love be based on the
beauty, grace, love, and favour of a woman, and our purpose be pleasure,
honour, or profit, such love cannot long endure; for when the foundation on
which it rests is gone, the love itself departs from us. But I am firmly of
opinion that he who loves with no other end or desire than to love well, will
sooner yield up his soul in death than suffer his great love to leave his
heart.”
“In faith,” said Simontault, “I do not believe that you have ever been in
love. If you had felt the flame like other men, you would not now be
picturing to us Plato’s Republic, which may be described in writing but not
be put into practice.”
“Nay, I have been in love,” said Dagoucin, “and am so still, and shall
continue so as long as I live. But I am in such fear lest the manifestation of
this love should impair its perfection, that I shrink from declaring it even to
her from whom I would fain have the like affection. I dare not even think of
it lest my eyes should reveal it, for the more I keep my flame secret and
hidden, the more does my pleasure increase at knowing that my love is
perfect.”
“For all that,” said Geburon, “I believe that you would willingly have
love in return.”
“I do not deny it,” said Dagoucin, “but even were I beloved as much as
I love, my love would not be increased any more than it could be lessened,
were it not returned with equal warmth.”

Upon this Parlamente, who suspected this fantasy of Dagoucin’s, said
—
“Take care, Dagoucin; I have known others besides you who preferred
to die rather than speak.”
“Such persons, madam;” said Dagoucin, “I deem very happy.”
“Doubtless,” said Saffredent, “and worthy of a place among the
innocents of whom the Church sings:
‘Non loquendo sed moriendo confessi sunt.’ (4)

4 From the ritual for the Feast of the Holy Innocents.—M.

I have heard much of such timid lovers, but I have never yet seen one
die. And since I myself have escaped death after all the troubles I have
borne, I do not think that any one can die of love.”
“Ah, Saffredent!” said Dagoucin, “how do you expect to be loved
since those who are of your opinion never die? Yet have I known a goodly
number who have died of no other ailment than perfect love.”
“Since you know such stories,” said Longarine, “I give you my vote to
tell us a pleasant one, which shall be the ninth of to-day.”
“To the end,” said Dagoucin, “that signs and miracles may lead you to
put faith in what I have said, I will relate to you something which happened
less than three years ago.”

[The Dying Gentleman receiving the Embraces of his Sweetheart]

TALE IX.
The perfect love borne by a gentleman to a damsel, being too deeply
concealed and disregarded, brought about his death, to the great regret of
his sweetheart.
Between Dauphiné and Provence there lived a gentleman who was far
richer in virtue, comeliness, and honour than in other possessions, and who
was greatly in love with a certain damsel. I will not mention her name, out
of consideration for her kinsfolk, who are of good and illustrious descent;
but you may rest assured that my story is a true one. As he was not of such
noble birth as herself, he durst not reveal his affection, for the love he bore
her was so great and perfect that he would rather have died than have
desired aught to her dishonour. Seeing that he was so greatly beneath her, he
had no hope of marrying her; in his love, therefore, his only purpose was to
love her with all his strength and as perfectly as he was able. This he did for
so long a time that at last she had some knowledge of it; and, seeing that the
love he bore her was so full of virtue and of good intent, she felt honoured
by it, and showed him in turn so much favour that he, who sought nothing
better than this, was well contented.
But malice, which is the enemy of all peace, could not suffer this
honourable and happy life to last, and certain persons spoke to the maiden’s
mother of their amazement at this gentleman being thought so much of in
her house. They said that they suspected him of coming there more on
account of her daughter than of aught else, adding that he had often been
seen in converse with her. The mother, who doubted the gentleman’s honour
as little as that of any of her own children, was much distressed on hearing
that his presence was taken in bad part, and, dreading lest malicious tongues
should cause a scandal, she entreated that he would not for some time
frequent her house as he had been wont to do. He found this hard to bear,
for he knew that his honourable conversation with her daughter did not
deserve such estrangement. Nevertheless, in order to silence evil gossip, he
withdrew until the rumours had ceased; then he returned as before, his
absence having in no wise lessened his love.

One day, however, whilst he was in the house, he heard some talk of
marrying the damsel to a gentleman who did not seem to him to be so very
rich that he should be entitled to take his mistress from him. So he began to
pluck up courage, and engaged his friends to speak for him, believing that,
if the choice were left to the damsel, she would prefer him to his rival.
Nevertheless, the mother and kinsfolk chose the other suitor, because he
was much richer; whereupon the poor gentleman, knowing his sweetheart to
be as little pleased as himself, gave way to such sorrow, that by degrees,
and without any other distemper, he became greatly changed, seeming as
though he had covered the comeliness of his face with the mask of that
death, to which hour by hour he was joyously hastening.
Meanwhile, he could not refrain from going as often as was possible to
converse with her whom he so greatly loved. But at last, when strength
failed him, he was constrained to keep his bed; yet he would not have his
sweetheart know of this, lest he should cast part of his grief on her. And
giving himself up to despair and sadness, he was no longer able to eat,
drink, sleep, or rest, so that it became impossible to recognise him by
reason of his leanness and strangely altered features.
Some one brought the news of this to his sweetheart’s mother, who
was a lady full of charity, and who had, moreover, such a liking for the
gentleman, that if all the kinsfolk had been of the same opinion as herself
and her daughter, his merits would have been preferred to the possessions of
the other. But the kinsfolk on the father’s side would not hear of it.
However, the lady went with her daughter to see the unhappy gentleman,
and found him more dead than alive. Perceiving that the end of his life was
at hand, he had that morning confessed and received the Holy Sacrament,
thinking to die without seeing anybody more. But although he was at
death’s door, when he saw her who for him was the resurrection and the life
come in, he felt so strengthened that he started up in bed.
“What motive,” said he to the lady, “has inclined you to come and see
one who already has a foot in the grave, and of whose death you are
yourself the cause?”
“How is it possible,” said the lady, “that the death of one whom we
like so well can be brought about by our fault? Tell me, I pray, why you
speak in this manner?”

“Madam,” he replied, “I concealed my love for your daughter as long
as I was able; and my kinsfolk, in speaking of a marriage between myself
and her, made known more than I desired, since I have thereby had the
misfortune to lose all hope; not, indeed, in regard to my own pleasure, but
because I know that she will never have such fair treatment and so much
love from any other as she would have had from me. Her loss of the best
and most loving friend she has in the world causes me more affliction than
the loss of my own life, which I desired to preserve for her sake only. But
since it cannot in any wise be of service to her, the loss of it is to me great
gain.”
Hearing these words, the lady and her daughter sought to comfort him.
“Take courage, my friend,” said the mother. “I pledge you my word
that, if God gives you back your health, my daughter shall have no other
husband but you. See, she is here present, and I charge her to promise you
the same.”
The daughter, weeping, strove to assure him of what her mother
promised. He well knew, however, that even if his health were restored he
would still lose his sweetheart, and that these fair words were only uttered
in order somewhat to revive him. Accordingly, he told them that had they
spoken to him thus three months before, he would have been the lustiest
and happiest gentleman in France; but that their aid came so late, it could
bring him neither belief nor hope. Then, seeing that they strove to make him
believe them, he said—
“Well, since, on account of my feeble state, you promise me a blessing
which, even though you would yourselves have it so, can never be mine, I
will entreat of you a much smaller one, for which, however, I was never yet
bold enough to ask.”
They immediately vowed that they would grant it, and bade him ask
boldly.
“I entreat you,” he said, “to place in my arms her whom you promise
me for my wife, and to bid her embrace and kiss me.”
The daughter, who was unaccustomed to such familiarity, sought to
make some difficulty, but her mother straightly commanded her, seeing that
the gentleman no longer had the feelings or vigour of a living man. Being
thus commanded, the girl went up to the poor sufferer’s bedside, saying—

“I pray you, sweetheart, be of good cheer.”
Then, as well as he could, the dying man stretched forth his arms,
wherein flesh and blood alike were lacking, and with all the strength
remaining in his bones embraced her who was the cause of his death. And
kissing her with his pale cold lips, he held her thus as long as he was able.
Then he said to her—
“The love I have borne you has been so great and honourable, that,
excepting in marriage, I have never desired of you any other favour than the
one you are granting me now, for lack of which and with which I shall
cheerfully yield up my spirit to God. He is perfect love and charity. He
knows the greatness of my love and the purity of my desire, and I beseech
Him, while I hold my desire within my arms, to receive my spirit into His
own.”
With these words he again took her in his arms, and with such
exceeding ardour that his enfeebled heart, unable to endure the effort, was
deprived of all its faculties and life; for joy caused it so to swell that the
soul was severed from its abode and took flight to its Creator.
And even when the poor body had lain a long time without life, and
was thus unable to retain its hold, the love which the damsel had always
concealed was made manifest in such a fashion that her mother and the
dead man’s servants had much ado to separate her from her lover. However,
the girl, who, though living, was in a worse condition than if she had been
dead, was by force removed at last out of the gentleman’s arms. To him they
gave honourable burial; and the crowning point of the ceremony was the
weeping and lamentation of the unhappy damsel, who having concealed her
love during his lifetime, made it all the more manifest after his death, as
though she wished to atone for the wrong that she had done him. And I have
heard that although she was given a husband to comfort her, she has never
since had joy in her heart. (1)

1 By an expression made use of by Dagoucin (see ante),
Queen Margaret gives us to understand that the incidents
here related occurred three years prior to the writing of
the story. It may be pointed out, however, that there is
considerable analogy between the conclusion of this tale and
the death of Geffroy Rudel de Blaye, one of the earliest
troubadours whose name has been handed down to us. Geffroy,
who lived at the close of the twelfth century, became so

madly enamoured of the charms of the Countess of Tripoli,
after merely hearing an account of her moral and physical
perfections, that, although in failing health, he embarked
for Africa to see her. On reaching the port of Tripoli, he
no longer had sufficient strength to leave the vessel,
whereupon the Countess, touched by his love, visited him on
board, taking his hand and giving him a kindly greeting.
Geffroy could scarcely say a few words of thanks; his
emotion was so acute that he died upon the spot. See J. de
Nostredame’s Vies des plus Célèbres et Anciens Poëtes
Provençaux(Lyons, 1575, p. 25); Raynouard’s Choix des
Poésies des Troubadours (vol. v. p. 165); and also
Raynouard’s Histoire Littéraire de la France (vol. xiv. p.
559).—L.

“What think you of that, gentlemen, you who would not believe what I
said? Is not this example sufficient to make you confess that perfect love,
when concealed and disregarded, may bring folks to the grave? There is not
one among you but knows the kinsfolk on the one and the other side, (2)
and so you cannot doubt the story, although nobody would be disposed to
believe it unless he had some experience in the matter.”

2 This certainly points to the conclusion that the tale is
founded upon fact, and not, as M. Leroux de Lincy suggests,
borrowed from the story of Geffroy Rudel de Blaye. It will
have been observed (ante) that the Queen of Navarre
curiously enough lays the scene of her narrative between
Provence and Dauphiné. These two provinces bordered upon one
another, excepting upon one point where they were separated
by the so-called Comtat Venaissin or Papal state of Avignon.
Here, therefore, the incidents of the story, if authentic,
would probably have occurred. The story may be compared with
Tale L. (post).—Ed.

When the ladies heard this they all had tears in their eyes, but Hircan
said to them—
“He was the greatest fool I ever heard of. By your faith, now, I ask
you, is it reasonable that we should die for women who are made only for
us, or that we should be afraid to ask them for what God has commanded
them to give us? I do not speak for myself nor for any who are married. I
myself have all that I want or more; but I say it for such men as are in need.
To my thinking, they must be fools to fear those whom they should rather
make afraid. Do you not perceive how greatly this poor damsel regretted
her folly? Since she embraced the gentleman’s dead body—an action

repugnant to human nature—she would not have refused him while he was
alive had he then trusted as much to boldness as he trusted to pity when he
lay upon his death-bed.”
“Nevertheless,” said Oisille, “the gentleman most plainly showed that
he bore her an honourable love, and for this he will ever be worthy of all
praise. Chastity in a lover’s heart is something divine rather than human.”
“Madam,” said Saffredent, “in support of Hircan’s opinion, which is
also mine, I pray you believe that Fortune favours the bold, and that there is
no man loved by a lady but may at last, in whole or in part, obtain from her
what he desires, provided he seek it with wisdom and passion. But
ignorance and foolish fear cause men to lose many a good chance; and then
they impute their loss to their mistress’s virtue, which they have never
verified with so much as the tip of the finger. A fortress was never well
assailed but it was taken.”
“Nay,” said Parlamente, “I am amazed that you two should dare to talk
in this way. Those whom you have loved owe you but little thanks, or else
your courting has been carried on in such evil places that you deem all
women to be alike.”
“For myself, madam,” said Saffredent, “I have been so unfortunate that
I am unable to boast; but I impute my bad luck less to the virtue of the
ladies than to my own fault, in not conducting my enterprises with
sufficient prudence and sagacity. In support of my opinion I will cite no
other authority than the old woman in the Romance of the Rose, who says—

‘Of all, fair sirs, it truly may be said,
Woman for man and man for woman’s made.’ (3)

3 From John de Mehun’s continuation of the poem.—M. 2

Accordingly I shall always believe that if love once enters a woman’s
heart, her lover will have fair fortune, provided he be not a simpleton.”
“Well,” said Parlamente, “if I were to name to you a very loving
woman who was greatly sought after, beset and importuned, and who, like a
virtuous lady, proved victorious over her heart, flesh, love and lover, would
you believe this true thing possible?”
“Yes,” said he, “I would.”

“Then,” said Parlamente, “you must all be hard of belief if you do not
believe this story.”
“Madam,” said Dagoucin, “since I have given an example to show
how the love of a virtuous gentleman lasted even until death, I pray you, if
you know any such story to the honour of a lady, to tell it to us, and so end
this day. And be not afraid to speak at length, for there is yet time to relate
many a pleasant matter.”
“Then, since I am to wind up the day,” said Parlamente, “I will make
no long preamble, for my story is so beautiful and true that I long to have
you know it as well as I do myself. Although I was not an actual witness of
the events, they were told to me by one of my best and dearest friends in
praise of the man whom of all the world he had loved the most. But he
charged me, should I ever chance to relate them, to change the names of the
persons. Apart, therefore, from the names of persons and places the story is
wholly true.”

[The Countess asking an Explanation from Amadour]

TALE X.
Florida, after virtuously resisting Amadour, who had assailed her
honour almost to the last extremity, repaired, upon her husbands death, to
the convent of Jesus, and there took the veil. (1)

1 This tale appears to be a combination of fact and fiction.
Although Queen Margaret states that she has changed the
names of the persons, and also of the places where the
incidents happened, several historical events are certainly
brought into the narrative, the scene of which is laid in
Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. M. Le Roux
de Lincy is of opinion, however, that Margaret really refers
to some affair at the Court of Charles VIII. or Louis XII.,
and he remarks that there is great similarity between the
position of the Countess of Aranda, left a widow at an early
age with a son and a daughter, and that of Louise of Savoy
with her two children. M. Lacroix and M. Dillaye believe the
hero and heroine to be Admiral de Bonnivet and Margaret. It
has often been suspected that the latter regarded her
brother’s favourite with affection until after the attempt
related in Tale IV.—Ed.

In the county of Aranda, (2) in Aragon, there lived a lady who, while
still very young, was left a widow, with a son and a daughter, by the Count
of Aranda, the name of the daughter being Florida. This lady strove to bring
up her children in all the virtues and qualities which beseem lords and
gentlemen, so that her house was reputed to be one of the most honourable
in all the Spains. She often went to Toledo, where the King of Spain dwelt,
and when she came to Saragossa, which was not far from her house, she
would remain a long while with the Queen and the Court, by whom she was
held in as high esteem as any lady could be.

2 Aranda, in the valley of the Duero, between Burgos
and Madrid, is one of the most ancient towns in Spain, but of
miserable aspect, although a large trade is carried on there
in cheap red wines. (Ferdinand and Isabella resided for some
time at Aranda.—Ed.)

Going one day, according to her custom, to visit the King, then at his
castle of La Jasserye, (3) at Saragossa, this lady passed through a village
belonging to the Viceroy of Catalonia, (4) who, by reason of the great wars
between the kings of France and Spain, had not been wont to stir from the
frontier at Perpignan. But for the time being there was peace, so that the
Viceroy and all his captains had come to do homage to the King. The
Viceroy, learning that the Countess of Aranda was passing through his
domain, went to meet her, not only for the sake of the ancient friendship he
bore her, but in order to do her honour as a kinswoman of the King’s.

3 This castle is called La Jafferie in Boaistuau’s edition
of 1558, and several learned commentators have speculated as
to which is the correct spelling. Not one of them seems to
have been aware that in the immediate vicinity of Saragossa
there still stands an old castle called El Jaferia or
Aljaferia, which, after being the residence of the Moorish
sovereigns, became that of the Spanish kings of Aragon. It
has of modern times been transformed into barracks.—Ed.

4 Henry of Aragon, Duke of Segorbe and Count of Ribagorce,
was Viceroy of Catalonia at this period. He was called the
Infante of Fortune, on account of his father having died
before his birth in 1445.—B. J.

Now he had in his train many honourable gentlemen, who, in the long
waging of war, had gained such great honour and renown that all who saw
them and consorted with them deemed themselves fortunate. Among others
there was one named Amadour, who, although but eighteen or nineteen
years old, was possessed of such well-assured grace and of such excellent
understanding that he would have been chosen from a thousand to hold a
public office. It is true that this excellence of understanding was
accompanied by such rare and winsome beauty that none could look at him
without pleasure. And if his comeliness was of the choicest, it was so hard
pressed by his speech that one knew not whether to give the greatest honour
to his grace, his beauty, or the excellence of his conversation.
What caused him, however, to be still more highly esteemed was his
great daring, which was no whit diminished by his youth. He had already
shown in many places what he could do, so that not only the Spains, but
France and Italy also made great account of his merits. For in all the wars in
which he had taken part he had never spared himself, and when his country

was at peace he would go in quest of wars in foreign lands, where he was
loved and honoured by both friend and foe.
This gentleman, for the love he bore his commander, had come to the
domain where the Countess of Aranda had arrived, and remarking the
beauty and grace of her daughter Florida, who was then only twelve years
old, he thought to himself that she was the fairest maiden he had ever seen,
and that if he could win her favour it would give him greater satisfaction
than all the wealth and pleasure he might obtain from another. After looking
at her for a long time he resolved to love her, although his reason told him
that what he desired was impossible by reason of her lineage as well as of
her age, which was such that she could not yet understand any amorous
discourse. In spite of this, he fortified himself with hope, and reflected that
time and patience might bring his efforts to a happy issue. And from that
moment the kindly love, which of itself alone had entered Amadour’s heart,
assured him of all favour and the means of attaining his end.
To overcome the greatest difficulty before him, which consisted in the
remoteness of his own home and the few opportunities he would have of
seeing Florida again, he resolved to get married. This was contrary to what
he had determined whilst with the ladies of Barcelona and Perpignan, in
which places he was in such favour that little or nothing was refused him;
and, indeed, by reason of the wars, he had dwelt so long on the frontiers
that, although he was born near Toledo, he seemed rather a Catalan than a
Castillan. He came of a rich and honourable house, but being a younger
son, he was without patrimony; and thus it was that Love and Fortune,
seeing him neglected by his kin, determined to make him their masterpiece,
endowing him with such qualities as might obtain what the laws of the land
had refused him. He was of much experience in the art of war, and was so
beloved by all lords and princes that he refused their favours more
frequently than he had occasion to seek them.
The Countess, of whom I have spoken, arrived then at Saragossa and
was well received by the King and all his Court. The Governor of Catalonia
often came to visit her, and Amadour failed not to accompany him that he
might have the pleasure of merely seeing Florida, for he had no opportunity
of speaking with her. In order to establish himself in this goodly company
he paid his addresses to the daughter of an old knight, his neighbour. This
maiden was named Avanturada, and was so intimate with Florida that she

knew all the secrets of her heart. Amadour, as much for the worth which he
found in Avanturada as for the three thousand ducats a year which formed
her dowry, determined to address her as a suitor, and she willingly gave ear
to him. But as he was poor and her father was rich, she feared that the latter
would never consent to the marriage except at the instance of the Countess
of Aranda. She therefore had recourse to the lady Florida and said to her—
“You have seen, madam, that Castilian gentleman who often talks to
me. I believe that all his aim is to have me in marriage. You know, however,
what kind of father I have; he will never consent to the match unless he be
earnestly entreated by the Countess and you.”
Florida, who loved the damsel as herself, assured her that she would
lay the matter to heart as though it were for her own benefit; and
Avanturada then ventured so far as to present Amadour to her. He was like
to swoon for joy on kissing Florida’s hand, and although he was accounted
the readiest speaker in Spain, yet in her presence he became dumb. At this
she was greatly surprised, for, although she was only twelve years old, she
had already often heard it said that there was no man in Spain who could
speak better or with more grace. So, finding that he said nothing to her, she
herself spoke.
“Senor Amadour,” she began, “the renown you enjoy throughout all
the Spains has made you known to everybody here, and all are desirous of
affording you pleasure. If therefore I can in any way do this, you may
dispose of me.”
Amadour was in such rapture at sight of the lady’s beauty that he could
scarcely utter his thanks. However, although Florida was astonished to find
that he made no further reply, she imputed it rather to some whim than to
the power of love; and so she withdrew, without saying anything more.
Amadour, who perceived the qualities which even in earliest youth
were beginning to show themselves in Florida, now said to her whom he
desired to marry—
“Do not be surprised if I lost the power of utterance in presence of the
lady Florida. I was so astonished at finding such qualities and such sensible
speech in one so very young that I knew not what to say to her. But I pray
you, Avanturada, you who know her secrets, tell me if she does not of
necessity possess the hearts of all the gentlemen of the Court. Any who
know her and do not love her must be stones or brutes.”

Avanturada, who already loved Amadour more than any other man in
the world, could conceal nothing from him, but told him that Florida was
loved by every one. However, by reason of the custom of the country, few
spoke to her, and only two had as yet made any show of love towards her.
These were two princes of Spain, and they desired to marry her, one being
the son of the Infante of Fortune (5) and the other the young Duke of
Cardona. (6)

5 M. Lacroix asserts that the Infante of Fortune left no son
by his wife, Guyomare de Castro y Norogna; whereas M. Le
Roux de Lincy contends that he had a son—Alfonso of Aragon—
who in 1506 was proposed as a husband for Crazy Jane.
Alfonso would therefore probably be the prince referred to
by Margaret.—Ed.

6 Cardona, a fortified town on the river Cardoner, at a few
miles from Barcelona, was a county in the time of Ferdinand
and Isabella, and was raised by them to the rank of a duchy
in favour of Ramon Folch I. To-day it has between two and
three thousand inhabitants, and is chiefly noted for its
strongly built castillo. The young Duke spoken of by Queen
Margaret would be Ramon Folch’s son, who was also named
Ramon.—B. J. and Ed.

“I pray you,” said Amadour, “tell me which of them you think she
loves the most.”
“She is so discreet,” said Avanturada, “that on no account would she
confess to having any wish but her mother’s. Nevertheless, as far as can be
judged, she likes the son of the Infante of Fortune far more than she likes
the young Duke of Cardona. But her mother would rather have her at
Cardona, for then she would not be so far away. I hold you for a man of
good understanding, and, if you are so minded, you may judge of her choice
this very day, for the son of the Infante of Fortune, who is one of the
handsomest and most accomplished princes in Christendom, is being
brought up at this Court. If we damsels could decide the marriage by our
opinions, he would be sure of having the Lady Florida, for they would make
the comeliest couple in all Spain. You must know that, although they are
both young, she being but twelve and he but fifteen, it is now three years
since their love for each other first began; and if you would secure her
favour, I advise you to become his friend and follower.”

Amadour was well pleased to find that Florida loved something,
hoping that in time he might gain the place not of husband but of lover. He
had no fear in regard to her virtue, but was rather afraid lest she should be
insensible to love. After this conversation he began to consort with the son
of the Infante of Fortune, and readily gained his favour, being well skilled
in all the pastimes that the young Prince was fond of, especially in the
handling of horses, in the practice of all kinds of weapons, and indeed in
every diversion and pastime befitting a young man.
However, war broke out again in Languedoc, and it was necessary that
Amadour should return thither with the Governor. This he did, but not
without great regret, since he could in no wise contrive to return to where
he might see Florida. Accordingly, when he was setting forth, he spoke to a
brother of his, who was majordomo to the Queen of Spain, and told him of
the good match he had found in the Countess of Aranda’s house, in the
person of Avanturada; entreating him, in his absence, to do all that he could
to bring about the marriage, by employing his credit with the King, the
Queen, and all his friends. The majordomo, who was attached to his
brother, not only by reason of their kinship, but on account of Amadour’s
excellent qualities, promised to do his best. This he did in such wise that the
avaricious old father forgot his own nature to ponder over the qualities of
Amadour, as pictured to him by the Countess of Aranda, and especially by
the fair Florida, as well as by the young Count of Aranda, who was now
beginning to grow up, and to esteem people of merit. When the marriage
had been agreed upon by the kinsfolk, the Queen’s majordomo sent for his
brother, there being at that time a truce between the two kings. (7)
Meanwhile, the King of Spain withdrew to Madrid to avoid the bad air
which prevailed in divers places, and, by the advice of his Council, as well
as at the request of the Countess of Aranda, he consented to the marriage of
the young Count with the heiress Duchess of Medina Celi. (8) He did this
no less for their contentment and the union of the two houses than for the
affection he bore the Countess of Aranda; and he caused the marriage to be
celebrated at the castle of Madrid. (9)

7 There had been a truce in 1497, but Queen Margaret
probably alludes to that of four months’ duration towards
the close of 1503.—B.J.

8 Felix-Maria, widow of the Duke of Feria, and elder sister

of Luis Francisco de la Cerda, ninth of the name. She became
heiress to the titles and estates of the house of Medina-
Celi upon her brother’s death. If, however, Queen Margaret
is really describing some incident in her own life, she must
refer to Louis XII.‘s daughter, Claude, married in 1514 to
Francis I.—D.

9 The castle here referred to was the Moorish Alcazar,
destroyed by fire in 1734. The previous statement that King
Ferdinand withdrew to Madrid on account of the bad air
prevailing in other places is borne out by the fact that the
town enjoyed a most delightful climate prior to the
destruction of the forests which surrounded it.—Ed.

Amadour was present at this wedding, and succeeded so well in
furthering his own union, that he married Avanturada, whose affection for
him was far greater than his was for her. But this marriage furnished him
with a very convenient cloak, and gave him an excuse for resorting to the
place where his spirit ever dwelt. After he was married he became very bold
and familiar in the Countess of Aranda’s household, so that he was no more
distrusted than if he had been a woman. And although he was now only
twenty-two years of age, he showed such good sense that the Countess of
Aranda informed him of all her affairs, and bade her son consult with him
and follow his counsel.
Having gained their esteem thus far, Amadour comported himself so
prudently and calmly that even the lady he loved was not aware of his
affection for her. By reason, however, of the love she bore his wife, to
whom she was more attached than to any other woman, she concealed none
of her thoughts from him, and was pleased to tell him of all her love for the
son of the Infante of Fortune. Although Amadour’s sole aim was to win her
entirely for himself, he continually spoke to her of the Prince; indeed, he
cared not what might be the subject of their converse, provided only that he
could talk to her for a long time. However, he had not remained a month in
this society after his marriage when he was constrained to return to the war,
and he was absent for more than two years without returning to see his wife,
who continued to live in the place where she had been brought up.
Meanwhile Amadour often wrote to her, but his letters were for the
most part messages to Florida, who on her side never failed to return them,
and would with her own hand add some pleasant words to the letters which
Avanturada wrote. It was on this account that the husband of the latter wrote

to her very frequently; yet of all this Florida knew nothing except that she
loved Amadour as if he had been her brother. Several times during the
course of five years did Amadour return and go away again; yet so short
was his stay that he did not see Florida for two months altogether.
Nevertheless, in spite of distance and length of absence, his love continued
to increase.
At last it happened that he made a journey to see his wife, and found
the Countess far removed from the Court, for the King of Spain was gone
into Andalusia, (10) taking with him the young Count of Aranda, who was
already beginning to bear arms.

10 There had been a revolt at Granada in 1499, and in the
following year the Moors rose in the Alpujarras, whereupon
King Ferdinand marched against them in person.—L.

Thus the Countess had withdrawn to a country-house belonging to her
on the frontiers of Aragon and Navarre. She was well pleased on seeing
Amadour, who had now been away for nearly three years. He was made
welcome by all, and the Countess commanded that he should be treated like
her own son. Whilst he was with her she informed him of all the affairs of
her household, leaving most of them to his judgment. And so much credit
did he win in her house that wherever he visited all doors were opened to
him, and, indeed, people held his prudence in such high esteem that he was
trusted in all things as though he had been an angel or a saint.
Florida, by reason of the love she bore his wife and himself, sought
him out wherever he went. She had no suspicion of his purpose, and was
unrestrained in her manners, for her heart was free from love, save that she
felt great contentment whenever she was near Amadour. To more than this
she gave not a thought.
Amadour, however, had a hard task to escape the observation of those
who knew by experience how to distinguish a lover’s looks from another
man’s; for when Florida, thinking no evil, came and spoke familiarly to
him, the fire that was hidden in his heart so consumed him that he could not
keep the colour from rising to his face or sparks of flame from darting from
his eyes. Thus, in order that none might be any the wiser, he began to pay
court to a very beautiful lady named Paulina, a woman so famed for beauty
in her day that few men who saw her escaped from her toils.

This Paulina had heard how Amadour had made love at Barcelona and
Perpignan, insomuch that he had gained the affection of the highest and
most beautiful ladies in the land, especially that of a certain Countess of
Palamos, who was esteemed the first for beauty among all the ladies of
Spain; and she told him that she greatly pitied him, since, after so much
good fortune, he had married such an ugly wife. Amadour, who well
understood by these words that she had a mind to supply his need, made her
the fairest speeches he could devise, seeking to conceal the truth by
persuading her of a falsehood. But she, being subtle and experienced in
love, was not to be put off with mere words; and feeling sure that his heart
was not to be satisfied with such love as she could give him, she suspected
he wished to make her serve as a cloak, and so kept close watch upon his
eyes. These, however, knew so well how to dissemble, that she had nothing
to guide her but the barest suspicion.
Nevertheless, her observation sorely troubled Amadour; for Florida,
who was ignorant of all these wiles, often spoke to him before Paulina in
such a familiar fashion that he had to make wondrous efforts to compel his
eyes to belie his heart. To avoid unpleasant consequences, he one day, while
leaning against a window, spoke thus to Florida—
“I pray you, sweetheart, counsel me whether it is better for a man to
speak or die?”
Florida forthwith replied—
“I shall always counsel my friends to speak and not to die. There are
few words that cannot be mended, but life once lost can never be regained.”
“Will you promise me, then,” said Amadour, “that you will not be
displeased by what I wish to tell you, nor yet alarmed at it, until you have
heard me to the end?”
“Say what you will,” she replied; “if you alarm me, none can reassure
me.”
“For two reasons,” he then began, “I have hitherto been unwilling to
tell you of the great affection that I feel for you. First, I wished to prove it to
you by long service, and secondly, I feared that you might deem it
presumption in me, who am but a simple gentleman, to address myself to
one upon whom it is not fitting that I should look. And even though I were
of royal station like your own, your heart, in its loyalty, would suffer none
save the son of the Infante of Fortune, who has won it, to speak to you of

love. But just as in a great war necessity compels men to devastate their
own possessions and to destroy their corn in the blade, that the enemy may
derive no profit therefrom, so do I risk anticipating the fruit which I had
hoped to gather in season, lest your enemies and mine profit by it to your
detriment. Know, then, that from your earliest youth I have devoted myself
to your service and have ever striven to win your favour. For this purpose
alone I married her whom I thought you loved best, and, being acquainted
with the love you bear to the son of the Infante of Fortune, I have striven to
serve him and consort with him, as you yourself know. I have sought with
all my power for everything that I thought could give you pleasure. You see
that I have won the esteem of your mother, the Countess, and of your
brother, the Count, and of all you love, so that I am regarded here, not as a
dependant, but as one of the family. All my efforts for five years past have
had no other end than that I might spend my whole life near you.
“Understand that I am not one of those who would by these means
seek to obtain from you any favour or pleasure otherwise than virtuous. I
know that I cannot marry you, and even if I could, I would not do so in face
of the love you bear him whom I would fain see your husband. And as for
loving you with a vicious love like those who hope that long service will
bring them a reward to the dishonour of a lady, that is far from my purpose.
I would rather see you dead than know that you were less worthy of being
loved, or that your virtue had diminished for the sake of any pleasure to me.
For the end and reward of my service I ask but one thing, namely, that you
will be so faithful a mistress to me, as never to take your favour from me,
and that you will suffer me to continue as I now am, trusting in me more
than in any other, and accepting from me the assurance that if for your
honour’s sake, or for aught concerning you, you ever have need of a
gentleman’s life, I will gladly place mine at your disposal. You may be sure
also that whatever I may do that is honourable and virtuous, will be done
solely for love of you. If for the sake of ladies less worthy than you I have
ever done anything that has been considered of account, be sure that, for a
mistress like yourself, my enterprise will so increase, that things I
heretofore found impossible will become very easy to me. If, however, you
will not accept me as wholly yours, I am resolved to lay aside my arms and
to renounce the valour which has failed to help me in my need. So I pray
you grant me my just request, for your honour and conscience cannot refuse
it.”

The maiden, hearing these unwonted words, began to change colour
and to cast down her eyes like a woman in alarm. However, being sensible
and discreet, she replied—
“Since you already have what you ask of me, Amadour, why make me
such a long harangue? I fear me lest beneath your honourable words there
be some hidden guile to deceive my ignorance and youth, and I am sorely
perplexed what to reply. Were I to refuse the honourable love you offer, I
should do contrary to what I have hitherto done, for I have always trusted
you more than any other man in the world. Neither my conscience nor my
honour oppose your request, nor yet the love I bear the son of the Infante of
Fortune, for that is founded on marriage, to which you do not aspire. I know
of nothing that should hinder me from answering you according to your
desire, if it be not a fear arising from the small need you have for talking to
me in this wise; for if what you ask is already yours, why speak of it so
ardently?”
Amadour, who was at no loss for an answer, then said to her—
“Madam, you speak very discreetly, and you honour me so greatly by
the trust which you say you have in me, that if I were not satisfied with such
good fortune I should be quite unworthy of it. But consider, madam, that he
who would build an edifice to last for ever must be careful to have a sure
and stable foundation. In the same way I, wishing to continue for ever in
your service, must not only take care to have the means of remaining near
to you, but also to prevent any one from knowing of the great affection that
I bear you. Although it is honourable enough to be everywhere proclaimed,
yet those who know nothing of lovers’ hearts often judge contrary to the
truth, and thence come reports as mischievous as though they were true. I
have been prompted to say this, and led to declare my love to you, because
Paulina, feeling in her heart that I cannot love her, holds me in suspicion
and does nought but watch my face wherever I may be. Hence, when you
come and speak to me so familiarly in her presence, I am in great fear lest I
should make some sign on which she may ground her judgment, and should
so fall into that which I am anxious to avoid. For this reason I am lead to
entreat you not to come and speak to me so suddenly before her or before
others whom you know to be equally malicious, for I would rather die than
have any living creature know the truth. Were I not so regardful of your
honour, I should not have sought this converse with you, for I hold myself

sufficiently happy in the love and trust you bear me, and I ask nothing more
save that they may continue.”
Florida, who could not have been better pleased, began to be sensible
of an unwonted feeling in her heart. She saw how honourable were the
reasons which he laid before her; and she told him that virtue and honour
replied for her, and that she granted him his request. Amadour’s joy at this
no true lover can doubt.
Florida, however, gave more heed to his counsel than he desired, for
she became timid not only in presence of Paulina but elsewhere, and ceased
to seek him out as she had been accustomed to do. While they were thus
separated she took Amadour’s constant converse with Paulina in bad part,
for, seeing that the latter was beautiful, she could not believe that Amadour
did not love her. To beguile her sorrow she conversed continually with
Avanturada, who was beginning to feel very jealous of her husband and
Paulina, and often complained of them to Florida, who comforted her as
well as she could, being herself smitten with the same disease. Amadour
soon perceived the change in Florida’s demeanour, and forthwith thought
that she was keeping aloof from him not merely by his own advice, but also
on account of some bitter fancies of her own.
One day, when they were coming from vespers at a monastery, he
spoke to her, and asked—
“What countenance is this you show me, madam?”
“That which I believe you desire,” replied Florida.
Thereupon, suspecting the truth, and desiring to know whether he was
right, he said to her—
“I have used my time so well, madam, that Paulina no longer has any
suspicion of you.”
“You could not do better,” she replied, “both for yourself and for me.
While giving pleasure to yourself you bring me honour.”
Amadour gathered from this speech that she believed he took pleasure
in conversing with Paulina, and so great was his despair that he could not
refrain from saying angrily to her—
“In truth, madam, you begin betimes to torment your lover and pelt
him with hard words. I do not think I ever had a more irksome task than to
be obliged to hold converse with a lady I do not love. But since you take

what I have done to serve you in bad part, I will never speak to her again,
happen what may. And that I may hide my wrath as I have hidden my joy, I
will betake me to some place in the neighbourhood, and there wait till your
caprice has passed away. I hope, however, I shall there receive tidings from
my captain and be called back to the war, where I will remain long enough
to show you that nothing but yourself has kept me here.”
So saying, he forthwith departed without waiting for her reply.
Florida felt the greatest vexation and sorrow imaginable; and love,
meeting with opposition, began to put forth its mighty strength. She
perceived that she had been in the wrong, and wrote continually to
Amadour entreating him to return, which he did after a few days, when his
anger had abated.
I cannot undertake to tell you minutely all that they said to each other
in order to destroy this jealousy. But at all events he won the victory, and
she promised him that not only would she never believe he loved Paulina,
but that she would ever be convinced he found it an intolerable martyrdom
to speak either to Paulina or to any one else except to do herself a service.
When love had conquered this first suspicion, and while the two lovers
were beginning to take fresh pleasure in conversing together, news came
that the King of Spain was sending all his army to Salces. (11)

11 Salces, a village about fifteen miles north of Perpignan,
noted for its formidable fortress, still existing and
commanding a pass through the Corbière Mountains, which in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries separated France from
Roussillon, then belonging to Spain. The French burnt the
village and demolished the fort of Salces in 1496, but the
latter was rebuilt by the Spaniards in the most massive
style. The walls of the fort are 66 feet thick at the base
and 54 feet thick at the summit. When Queen Margaret
returned from Spain in 152,5 she reached France by the pass
of Salces. (See vol. i. p. xlvi.).—Ed.

Amadour, accustomed ever to be the first in battle, failed not to seize
this opportunity of winning renown; but in truth he set forth with unwonted
regret, both on account of the pleasure he was losing and because he feared
that he might find a change on his return. He knew that Florida, who was
now fifteen or sixteen years old, was sought in marriage by many great
princes and lords, and he reflected that if she were married during his

absence he might have no further opportunity of seeing her, unless, indeed,
the Countess of Aranda gave her his wife, Avanturada, as a companion.
However, by skilful management with his friends, he obtained a promise
from both mother and daughter that wherever Florida might go after her
marriage thither should his wife, Avanturada, accompany her. Although it
was proposed to marry Florida in Portugal, it was nevertheless resolved that
Avanturada should never leave her. With this assurance, yet not without
unspeakable regret, Amadour went away and left his wife with the
Countess.
When Florida found herself alone after his departure, she set about
doing such good and virtuous works as she hoped might win her the
reputation that belongs to the most perfect women, and might prove her to
be worthy of such a lover as Amadour. He having arrived at Barcelona, was
there welcomed by the ladies as of old; but they found a greater change in
him than they believed it possible for marriage to effect in any man. He
seemed to be vexed by the sight of things he had formerly desired; and even
the Countess of Palamos, whom he had loved exceedingly, could not
persuade him to visit her.
Amadour remained at Barcelona as short a time as possible, for he was
impatient to reach Salces, where he alone was now awaited. When he
arrived, there began between the two kings that great and cruel war which I
do not purpose to describe. (12) Neither will I recount the noble deeds that
were done by Amadour, for then my story would take up an entire day; but
you must know that he won renown far above all his comrades. The Duke
of Najera (13) having arrived at Perpignan in command of two thousand
men, requested Amadour to be his lieutenant, and so well did Amadour
fulfil his duty with this band, that in every skirmish the only cry was
“Najera!” (14)

12 In 1503 the French, under Marshals de Rieux and de Gié,
again besieged Salces, which had a garrison of 1200 men. The
latter opposed a vigorous defence during two months, and
upon the arrival of the old Duke of Alba with an army of
succour the siege had to be raised.—B. J.

13 Pedro Manriquez de Lara, Count of Trevigno, created Duke
of Najera by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1501.—B. J.

14 The Duke’s war-cry, repeated by his followers as a

rallying signal in the mêlée. War-cries varied greatly.
“Montjoie St. Denis” was that of the kings of France, and
“Passavant le meilleur” (the best to the front) that of the
Counts of Champagne. In other instances the war-cry
consisted of a single word, “Bigorre” being that of the
kings of Navarre, and “Flanders” that of the Princess of
Beaujeu. When the war-cry was merely a name, as in the case
of the Duke of Najera, it belonged to the head of the
family.—D.

Now it came to pass that the King of Tunis, who for a long time had
been at war with the Spaniards, heard that the kings of France and Spain
were warring with each other on the frontiers of Perpignan and Narbonne,
and bethought himself that he could have no better opportunity of vexing
the King of Spain. Accordingly, he sent a great number of light galleys and
other vessels to plunder and destroy all such badly-guarded places as they
could find on the coasts of Spain. (15)The people of Barcelona seeing a
great fleet passing in front of their town, sent word of the matter to the
Viceroy, who was at Salces, and he forthwith despatched the Duke of
Najera to Palamos. (16) When the Moors saw that place so well guarded,
they made a feint of passing on; but returning at midnight, they landed a
large number of men, and the Duke of Najera, being surprised by the
enemy, was taken prisoner.

15 The above two sentences, deficient in the MS. followed by
M. Le Roux de Lincy, have been borrowed from MS. No. 1520
(Bib. Nat.). It was in 1503 that a Moorish flotilla ravaged
the coast of Catalonia.—Ed.

16 The village of Palamos, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, south of Cape Bagur, and within fifteen miles
from Gerona.—Ed.

Amadour, who was on the alert and heard the din, forthwith assembled
as many of his men as possible, and defended himself so stoutly that the
enemy, in spite of their numbers, were for a long time unable to prevail
against him. But at last, hearing that the Duke of Najera was taken, and that
the Turks had resolved to set fire to Palamos and burn him in the house
which he was holding against them, he thought it better to yield than to
cause the destruction of the brave men who were with him. He also hoped
that by paying a ransom he might yet see Florida again. Accordingly, he
gave himself up to a Turk named Dorlin, a governor of the King of Tunis,

who brought him to his master. By the latter he was well received and still
better guarded; for the King deemed that in him he held the Achilles of all
the Spains.
Thus Amadour continued for two years in the service of the King of
Tunis. The news of the captures having reached Spain, the kinsfolk of the
Duke of Najera were in great sorrow; but those who held the country’s
honour dear deemed Amadour the greater loss. The rumour came to the
house of the Countess of Aranda, where the hapless Avanturada at that time
lay grievously sick. The Countess, who had great misgivings as to the
affection which Amadour bore to her daughter, though she suffered it and
concealed it for the sake of the merits she perceived in him, took Florida
apart and told her the mournful tidings. Florida, who was well able to
dissemble, replied that it was a great loss to the entire household, and that
above all she pitied his poor wife, who was herself so ill. Nevertheless,
seeing that her mother wept exceedingly, she shed a few tears to bear her
company; for she feared that if she dissembled too far the feint might be
discovered. From that time the Countess often spoke to her of Amadour, but
never could she surprise a look to guide her judgment.
I will pass over the pilgrimages, prayers, supplications, and fasts which
Florida regularly performed to ensure the safety of Amadour. As soon as he
had arrived at Tunis, he failed not to send tidings of himself to his friends,
and by a trusty messenger he apprised Florida that he was in good health,
and had hopes of seeing her again. This was the only consolation the poor
lady had in her grief, and you may be sure that, since she was permitted to
write, she did so with all diligence, so that Amadour had no lack of her
letters to comfort him.
The Countess of Aranda was about this time commanded to repair to
Saragossa, where the King had arrived; and here she found the young Duke
of Cardona, who so pressed the King and Queen that they begged the
Countess to give him their daughter in marriage. (17) The Countess
consented, for she was unwilling to disobey them in anything, and
moreover she considered that her daughter, being so young, could have no
will of her own.

17 The Spanish historians state that in 1513 the King, to
put an end to a quarrel between the Count of Aranda and the
Count of Ribagorce, charged Father John of Estuniga,

Provincial of the Order of St. Francis, to negotiate a
reconciliation between them, based on the marriage of the
eldest daughter of the Count of Aranda with the eldest son
of the Count of Ribagorce. The latter refusing his consent,
was banished from the kingdom.—D.

When all was settled, she told Florida that she had chosen for her the
match which seemed most suitable. Florida, knowing that when a thing is
once done there is small room for counsel, replied that God was to be
praised for all things; and, finding her mother look coldly upon her, she
sought rather to obey her than to take pity on herself. It scarcely comforted
her in her sorrows to learn that the son of the Infante of Fortune was sick
even to death; but never, either in presence of her mother or of any one else,
did she show any sign of grief. So strongly did she constrain herself, that
her tears, driven perforce back into her heart, caused so great a loss of blood
from the nose that her life was endangered; and, that she might be restored
to health, she was given in marriage to one whom she would willingly have
exchanged for death.
After the marriage Florida departed with her husband to the duchy of
Cardona, taking with her Avanturada, whom she privately acquainted with
her sorrow, both as regards her mother’s harshness and her own regret at
having lost the son of the Infante of Fortune; but she never spoke of her
regret for Amadour except to console his wife.
This young lady then resolved to keep God and honour before her
eyes. So well did she conceal her grief, that none of her friends perceived
that her husband was displeasing to her.
In this way she spent a long time, living a life that was worse than
death, as she failed not to inform her lover Amadour, who, knowing the
virtue and greatness of her heart, as well as the love that she had borne to
the son of the Infante of Fortune, thought it impossible that she could live
long, and mourned for her as for one that was more than dead. This sorrow
was an increase to his former grief, and forgetting his own distress in that
which he knew his sweetheart was enduring, he would willingly have
continued all his life the slave he was if Florida could thereby have had a
husband after her own heart. He learnt from a friend whom he had gained at
the Court of Tunis that the King, wishing to keep him if only he could make
a good Turk of him, intended to give him his choice between impalement
and the renunciation of his faith. Thereupon he so addressed himself to his

master, the governor who had taken him prisoner, that he persuaded him to
release him on parole. His master named, however, a much higher ransom
than he thought could be raised by a man of such little wealth, and then,
without speaking to the King, he let him go.
When Amadour reached the Court of the King of Spain, he stayed
there but a short time, and then, in order to seek his ransom among his
friends, he repaired to Barcelona, whither the young Duke of Cardona, his
mother, and Florida had gone on business. As soon as Avanturada heard that
her husband was returned, she told the news to Florida, who rejoiced as
though for love of her friend. Fearing, however, that her joy at seeing
Amadour might make her change her countenance, and that those who did
not know her might think wrongly of her, she remained at a window in
order to see him coming from afar. As soon as she perceived him she went
down by a dark staircase, so that none could see whether she changed
colour, and embracing Amadour, led him to her room, and thence to her
mother-in-law, who had never seen him. He had not been there for two days
before he was loved as much as he had been in the household of the
Countess of Aranda.
I leave you to imagine the conversation that he and Florida had
together, and how she complained to him of the misfortunes that had come
to her in his absence. After shedding many tears of sorrow, both for having
been married against her will and also for having lost one she loved so
dearly without any hope of seeing him again, she resolved to take
consolation from the love and trust she had towards Amadour. Though she
durst not declare the truth, he suspected it, and lost neither time nor
opportunity to show her how much he loved her.
Just when Florida was all but persuaded to receive him, not as a lover,
but as a true and perfect friend, a misfortune came to pass, for the King
summoned Amadour to him concerning some important matter.
His wife was so grieved on hearing these tidings that she swooned, and
falling down a staircase on which she was standing, was so hurt that she
never rose again. Florida having by this death lost all her consolation,
mourned like one who felt herself bereft of friends and kin. But Amadour
grieved still more; for on the one part he lost one of the best wives that ever
lived, and on the other the means of ever seeing Florida again. This caused
him such sorrow that he was near coming by a sudden death. The old

Duchess of Cardona visited him incessantly, reciting the arguments of
philosophers why he should endure his loss with patience. But all was of no
avail; for if on the one hand his wife’s death afflicted him, on the other his
love increased his martyrdom. Having no longer any excuse to stay when
his wife was buried, and his master again summoned him, his despair was
such that he was like to lose his reason.
Florida, who thinking to comfort him, was herself the cause of his
greatest grief, spent a whole afternoon in the most gracious converse with
him in order to lessen his sorrow, and assured him that she would find
means to see him oftener than he thought. Then, as he was to depart on the
following morning, and was so weak that he could scarcely stir from his
bed, he prayed her to come and see him in the evening after every one else
had left him. This she promised to do, not knowing that love in extremity is
void of reason.
Amadour altogether despaired of ever again seeing her whom he had
loved so long, and from whom he had received no other treatment than I
have described. Racked by secret passion and by despair at losing all means
of consorting with her, he resolved to play at double or quits, and either lose
her altogether or else wholly win her, and so pay himself in an hour the
reward which he thought he had deserved. Accordingly he had his bed
curtained in such a manner that those who came into the room could not see
him; and he complained so much more than he had done previously that all
the people of the house thought he had not twenty-four hours to live.
After every one else had visited him, Florida, at the request of her
husband himself, came in the evening, hoping to comfort him by declaring
her affection and by telling him that, so far as honour allowed, she was
willing to love him. She sat down on a chair beside the head of his bed, and
began her consolation by weeping with him. Amadour, seeing her filled
with such sorrow, thought that in her distress he might the more readily
achieve his purpose, and raised himself up in the bed. Florida, thinking that
he was too weak to do this, sought to prevent him, but he threw himself on
his knees before her saying, “Must I lose sight of you for ever?” Then he
fell into her arms like one exhausted. The hapless Florida embraced him
and supported him for a long time, doing all she could to comfort him. But
what she offered him to cure his pain only increased it; and while feigning

to be half dead, he, without saying a word, strove to obtain that which the
honour of ladies forbids.
When Florida perceived his evil purpose, in which she could hardly
believe after all his honourable conversation, she asked him what he sought
to do. Amadour, fearing her reply, which he knew could not be otherwise
than chaste and virtuous, said nothing, but pursued his attempt with all the
strength that he could muster. Florida, greatly astonished, suspected rather
that he had lost his senses than that he was really bent upon her dishonour,
and called out to a gentleman whom she knew to be in the room;
whereupon Amadour in extreme despair flung himself back upon his bed so
suddenly that the gentleman thought him dead.
Florida, who had risen from her chair, then said to the gentleman—
“Go quickly for some strong vinegar.”
This the gentleman did, whereupon Florida said—
“What madness, Amadour, has mounted to your brain? What was it
you thought and wished to do?”
Amadour, who had lost all reason in the vehemence of his love, replied
—
“Does so long a service merit so cruel a reward?”
“And what of the honour of which you have so often preached to me?”
said Florida.
“Ah! madam,” said Amadour, “it would be impossible to hold your
honour more dear than I have held it. Before you were married, I was able
so to subdue my heart that you knew nothing of my desires, but now that
you are wedded and your honour may be shielded, do I wrong you in asking
for what is mine? By the strength of my love I have won you. He who first
possessed your heart had so little desire for your person that he deserved to
lose both. He who now owns your person is not worthy to have your heart,
and hence even your person does not properly belong to him. But for five or
six years I have for your sake borne many pains and woes, which must
show you that your body and heart belong to me alone. Think not to defend
yourself by speaking of conscience, for when love constrains body and
heart sin is never imputed. Those who are driven by frenzy so far as to slay
themselves cannot sin, for passion leaves no room for reason; and if the
passion of love be more intolerable than any other, and more blinding to the

senses, what sin could you fasten upon one who yields to the conduct of
such indomitable power? I am going away, and have no hope of ever seeing
you again; but if before my departure I could have of you that assurance
which the greatness of my love deserves, I should be strengthened
sufficiently to endure in patience the sorrows of a long separation. If you
will not grant me my request you will ere long learn that your harshness has
brought me to a miserable and a cruel death.” (18)

18 The passage commencing “Those who are driven” and ending
“a cruel death” is deficient in the earlier editions of the
Heptameron, which give the following in place of it: “Do
not doubt but what those who have felt the power of love
will cast the blame on you who have so robbed me of my
liberty and dazzled my senses with your divine graces, that
not knowing what to do henceforth, I am constrained to go
away without the hope of ever seeing you again; certain,
however, that wherever I may be, you will still have part of
my heart, which will ever remain yours, be I on land, on the
sea, or in the hands of my most cruel enemies.” The above is
one of various instances of the liberty taken by Boaistuau
and Gruget with Margaret’s text.—Ed.

Florida was not less grieved than astonished to hear these words from
one whom she had never imagined capable of such discourse, and, weeping,
she thus replied—
“Alas, Amadour, is this the honourable converse that we used to have
together while I was young? Is this the honour or conscience which many a
time you counselled me to value more than life? Have you forgotten both
the worthy examples you set before me of virtuous ladies who withstood
unholy love, and also your own contempt for erring women? I cannot
believe you so changed, Amadour, that regard for God, your own
conscience, and my honour is wholly dead within you. But if it indeed be as
you say, I praise the divine goodness which has prevented the misfortune
into which I was about to fall, and has revealed to me by your own words
the heart of which I was so ignorant. Having lost the son of the Infante of
Fortune, not only by my marriage, but also, as is known to me, by reason of
his love for another, and finding myself wedded to a man whom, strive as I
may, I cannot love, I resolved to set heart and affection entirely on loving
you. This love I built upon that virtue which I had so often perceived in
you, and to which by your own assistance I think I have attained—I mean

the virtue of loving one’s honour and conscience more than life. I came
hither thinking to make this rock of virtue a sure foundation of love. But
you have in a moment shown me, Amadour, that instead of a pure and
cleanly rock, this foundation would have been one of shifting sand or filthy
mire; and although a great part of the house in which I hoped always to
dwell had already been raised, you have suddenly demolished it. Lay aside,
therefore, any hope you had concerning me, and make up your mind not to
seek me by look or word wherever I may be, or to hope that I shall ever be
able or willing to change my resolve. It is with the deepest sorrow that I tell
you this, though had I gone so far as to swear eternal love with you, I know
that my heart could not have lived through this meeting. Even now I am so
confounded to find myself deceived, that I am sure my life will be either
short or sad. With these words I bid you farewell, and for ever.”
I will not try to describe to you the grief that Amadour felt on hearing
this speech. It is impossible not only to describe it, but even to conceive it,
except indeed to such as have experienced the like. Seeing that with this
cruel conclusion she was about to leave him, he seized her by the arm,
knowing full well that, if he did not remove her evil opinion of him, he
would lose her for ever. Accordingly he dissembled his looks as well as he
could, and said—
“During my whole life, madam, I have desired to love a woman of
virtue, and having found so few of them, I was minded to put you to proof,
and so discover whether you were as well worthy of esteem as of love. Now
I know for certain that you are; and therefore I give praise to God, who has
inclined my heart to the love of such great perfection. I entreat you to
pardon my mad and foolhardy attempt, seeing that the issue of it has turned
to your honour and to my great satisfaction.”
Florida was beginning to learn through him the deceitfulness of men;
and, just as she had formerly found it difficult to believe in evil where it
existed, so did she now find it even more difficult to believe in virtue where
there was none.
“Would to God you spoke the truth,” she said to him; “but I am not so
ignorant as not to know by my experience in marriage that the blindness of
strong passion led you to act as you did. Had God given me a loose rein I
am sure that you would not have drawn bridle. Those who go in quest of
virtue are wont to take a different road to yours. But enough; if I have been

too hasty in crediting you with some goodness, it is time I learned the truth,
by which I am now delivered out of your hands.”
So saying, Florida left the room. As long as the night lasted she did
nought but weep; for the change that had taken place caused her intense
grief, and her heart had much ado to hold out against the sorrowing of love.
Although, guided by reason, she had resolved to love no more, yet the heart,
which cannot be subdued, would in no wise permit this. Thus she was
unable to love him less than before, and knowing that love had been the
cause of his offence, she made up her mind to satisfy love by continuing to
love him with her whole heart, and to obey honour by never giving any sign
of her affection either to him or to any one else.
In the morning Amadour departed in the distress that I have described.
Nevertheless his heart, which was so lofty that there was none like it in the
world, suffered him not to despair, but prompted him to new devices for
seeing Florida again and winning her favour. So as he proceeded to the
King of Spain, who was then at Toledo, he took his way through the county
of Aranda, where he arrived very late one evening, and found the Countess
in great sadness on account of the absence of her daughter.
When she saw Amadour she kissed and embraced him as though he
had been her own son, and this no less for the love she herself bore him as
for that which she suspected he had for Florida. She asked minutely for
news of her daughter, and he told her what he could, though not the entire
truth. However, he confessed the love which existed between them, and
which Florida had always concealed; and he begged the Countess to aid
him in hearing often of Florida, and to take her as speedily as possible to
Aranda.
At daybreak he went on his way, and when he had despatched his
business with the King he left for the war. So sad was he and so changed in
every way that ladies, captains, and acquaintances alike could scarcely
recognise him.
He now wore nothing but black, and this of a heavier pile than was
needful as mourning for his dead wife; but indeed her death served only as
a cloak for the sorrow that was in his heart. Thus Amadour spent three or
four years without returning to Court.
The Countess of Aranda hearing that Florida was changed and that it
was pitiful to see her, sent for her, hoping that she would return home. The

contrary, however, happened. When Florida learned that Amadour had told
her mother of their love, and that she, although so discreet and virtuous, had
approved of it, she was in extraordinary perplexity. On the one hand she
perceived that if her mother, who had such great esteem for Amadour, were
told the truth some mischief might befall the latter; and this even to save her
life she would not have brought to pass, for she felt strong enough to punish
his folly herself without calling on her kinsfolk for assistance. On the other
hand she saw that, if she concealed the evil she knew of him, she would be
constrained by her mother and all her friends to speak to him and show him
favour, and this she feared would only strengthen his evil purpose.
However, as he was a long way off, she kept her own counsel, and wrote to
him whenever the Countess commanded her. Still her letters were such that
he could see they were written more out of obedience than goodwill; and
the grief he felt in reading them was as great as his joy had been in reading
the earlier ones.
At the end of two or three years, when he had performed so many
noble deeds that all the paper in Spain could not contain the records of
them, (19) he conceived a very skilful device, not indeed to win Florida’s
heart, which he looked upon as lost, but to gain the victory over his enemy,
since such she had shown herself to be. He put aside all the promptings of
reason and even the fear of death, and at the risk of his life resolved to act
in the following way. He persuaded the chief Governor (20) to send him on
an embassy to the King concerning some secret attempt against Leucate;
(21) and he procured a command to take counsel with the Countess of
Aranda about the matter before communicating it to the King.

19 Margaret, perhaps, wrote “All the paper of Spain could
not contain them,” simply because Spanish paper was then of
very small size. Paper-making had, however, been almost
monopolised by Spain until the end of the thirteenth
century, the cotton used in the manufacture being imported
from the East.—M.

20 The Viceroy of Catalonia.—D.

21 Leucate, now a village, but said to have been a
flourishing town in the fourteenth century, lies near the
Mediterranean, at a few miles from Salces, and gives its
name to a large salt-water lake. Formerly fortified, it was

repeatedly besieged and burnt by the Spaniards; notably by
the Duke of Alba in 1503, after he had relieved Salces.—Ed.

Then he came post haste to the county of Aranda, where he knew
Florida to be, and secretly sent a friend to inform the Countess of his
coming, praying her to keep it secret, and to grant him audience at nightfall
without the knowledge of any one.
The Countess, who was very pleased at his coming, spoke of it to
Florida, and sent her to undress in her husband’s room, that she might be
ready when sent for after every one was gone to bed. Florida had not yet
recovered from her first alarm, but she said nothing of it to her mother, and
withdrew to an oratory in order to commend herself to Our Lord. While she
was praying that her heart might be preserved from all evil affection, she
remembered that Amadour had often praised her beauty, and that in spite of
long illness it had not been impaired. Being, therefore, more willing to
injure her beauty than suffer it to kindle an evil flame in the heart of an
honourable gentleman, she took a stone which lay in the chapel and struck
herself a grievous blow on the face so that her mouth, nose, and eyes were
quite disfigured. Then, in order that no one might suspect it to be of her
own doing, she let herself fall upon her face on leaving the chapel when
summoned by the Countess, and cried out loudly. The Countess coming
thither found her in this pitiful state, and forthwith caused her face to be
dressed and bandaged.
Then the Countess led her to her own apartment, and begged her to go
to her room and entertain Amadour until she herself had got rid of her
company. This Florida did, thinking that there were others with him.
But when she found herself alone with him, and the door closed upon
her, she was as greatly troubled as he was pleased. He thought that, by love
or violence, he would now have what he desired; so he spoke to her, and
finding that she made the same reply as before, and that even to save her
life she would not change her resolve, he was beside himself with despair.
“Before God, Florida,” he said to her, “your scruples shall not rob me
of the fruits of my labour. Since love, patience, and humble entreaty are of
no avail, I will spare no strength of mine to gain the boon, upon which all
its existence depends.”
Florida saw that his eyes and countenance were altered exceedingly, so
that his complexion, naturally the fairest in the world, was now as red as

fire, and his look, usually so gentle and pleasant, had become as horrible
and furious as though fierce flames were blazing in his heart and face. In his
frenzy he seized her delicate, weak hands in his own strong, powerful ones;
and she, finding herself in such bondage that she could neither defend
herself nor fly, thought that her only chance was to try whether he had not
retained some traces of his former love, for the sake of which he might
forego his cruelty. She therefore said to him—
“If you now look upon me, Amadour, in the light of an enemy, I entreat
you, by that pure love which I once thought was in your heart, to hearken to
me before you put me to torture.”
Seeing that he became attentive, she continued—
“Alas! Amadour, what can prompt you to seek after a thing that can
afford you no satisfaction, and thus afflict me with the profoundest grief?
You made trial of my inclinations in the days of my youth and earliest
beauty, and they perhaps served to excuse your passion; but I am amazed
that now, when I am old, and ugly, and sorrow-stricken, you should seek for
what you know you can never find. I am sure you do not doubt that my
mind is as it used to be, and so by force alone can you obtain what you
desire. If you observe the condition of my face, and lay aside the memory
of the beauty that once you saw in it, you will have no inclination to draw
any nearer; and if you still retain within you any remnants of your past love,
it is impossible that pity will not subdue your frenzy. To this pity, which I
have often found in you, I appeal with prayers for mercy. Suffer me to live
in peace, and in that honour which by your own counsel I have resolved to
preserve. But if the love you once bore me is now turned to hate, and you
desire, in vengeance rather than in love, to make me the unhappiest woman
alive, I protest to you that it shall not be so. You will force me against my
will to make your evil purpose known to her who thinks so highly of you;
and you may be sure that, when she learns it, your life will not be safe.”
But Amadour interrupted her.
“If I must die,” he said, “I shall be the sooner rid of my torment. The
disfigurement of your face, which I believe is of your own seeking, shall
not restrain me from making you mine. Though I could have nothing but
your bones, I would yet hold them close to me.”
When Florida saw that prayers, reasoning, and tears were alike of no
avail, and that while he cruelly pursued his evil purpose she lacked the

strength to resist him, she summoned the aid which she dreaded as greatly
as death, and in a sad and piteous voice called as loudly as she could upon
her mother. The Countess, hearing her daughter’s cries, had grave
misgivings of the truth, and hastened into the room with all possible speed.
Amadour, who was not so ready to die as he affirmed, desisted
promptly from his enterprise; and when the lady opened the door she found
him close beside it, and Florida some distance from him. “Amadour,” said
the Countess, “what is the matter? Tell me the truth.”
Amadour, who was never at a loss for invention, replied with a pale
and daunted face—
“Alas! madam, what change is this in the lady Florida? I was never so
astonished before, for, as I have told you, I thought I had a share in her
favour; but I now see clearly that I have lost it all. While she was being
brought up by you, she was, I think, no less discreet or virtuous than she is
at present; however, she had then no qualms of conscience about speaking
with any one. But now, when I sought to look at her, she would not suffer
me to do so. When I saw this behaviour on her part I thought I must be
dreaming, and asked her for her hand to kiss it after the manner of the
country. This she utterly refused me. I acknowledge, madam, that then I
acted wrongfully, and I entreat your pardon for it; for I took her hand, as it
were by force, and kissed it. I asked nothing more of her, but I believe that
she intends my death, for she called out to you as you know. Why she did
this I cannot tell, unless indeed she feared that I had some other purpose in
view. Nevertheless, madam, be this as it may, I confess that I am in the
wrong; for although she ought to love all who are devoted to you, fortune
wills it that I, who am of all most attached to her, am banished from her
good graces. Still, I shall ever continue the same both to you and to her; and
I entreat you to continue me in your good favour since, by no fault of my
own, I have now lost hers.”
The Countess, who partly believed and partly suspected him, went up
to her daughter and asked—“Why did you call me so loudly?”
Florida replied that she had felt afraid; and, although the Countess
questioned her minutely on many points, she would give no other reply.
Finding that she had escaped from her enemy she deemed him sufficiently
punished by the failure of his attempt.

After the Countess had had a long conversation with Amadour, she
suffered him to speak again in her presence with Florida, to see how he
would behave. He said but little, save that he thanked her for not having
confessed the truth to her mother, and begged that since she had expelled
him from her heart, she would at least allow no other to take his place.
“If my voice had not been my only means of defending myself,” she
replied, “it would never have been heard; and from me you shall have no
worse punishment, if you do not force me to it by troubling me again as you
have done. Do not fear that I can ever love another; since I have not found
the good I wished for in a heart that I considered to be the most virtuous in
the world, I do not expect to find it in any man. This evil fortune will
henceforth free me of all the passion that love can give.”
With these words she bade him farewell.
Her mother, who had been watching her face, was unable to form any
opinion; though from that time forth she clearly saw that her daughter had
lost all affection for Amadour. She imagined her so devoid of reason as to
hate everything that she herself loved; and from that hour she warred with
her in a strange way, spending seven years without speaking to her except
in anger, all which she did at Amadour’s request.
Meanwhile, on account of her mother’s harsh treatment, Florida’s
former dread of being with her husband was changed into a desire of never
leaving him. Seeing, however, that all her efforts were useless, she resolved
to deceive Amadour, and laying aside her coldness for a day or two, she
advised him to pay court to a lady who, she said, had been speaking of their
love.
This lady lived with the Queen of Spain, and was called Loretta.
Amadour believed the story, and, thinking that he might in this way regain
Florida’s good graces, he made love to Loretta, who was the wife of a
captain, one of the viceroys of the King of Spain. She, in her pleasure at
having gained such a lover, showed so much elation that the affair was
rumoured abroad. Even the Countess of Aranda, who was at Court, had
knowledge of it, and thenceforward treated Florida less harshly than before.
One day Florida heard that the captain, Loretta’s husband, had grown
jealous, and was resolved to kill Amadour in one way or another as best he
might. In spite of her altered treatment of Amadour, Florida did not desire
that evil should befall him, and so she immediately informed him of what

she had heard. He was quite ready to hark back again to his first love, and
thereupon told her that, if she would grant him three hours of her
conversation every day, he would never again speak to Loretta. But this she
would not grant. “Then,” said Amadour, “if you will not give me life, why
prevent me from dying, unless indeed you hope to make me suffer more
pain during life than any death could cause? But though death shun me, I
will seek it until I find it; then only shall I have rest.”
While they were on this footing, news came that the King of Granada
(22) was entering upon a great war against the King of Spain. The latter,
therefore, sent the Prince, his son, (23) to the war, and with him the
Constable of Castille and the Duke of Alba, (24) two old and prudent lords.
The Duke of Cardona and the Count of Aranda were unwilling to remain
behind, and prayed the King to give them some command. This he did as
befitted their rank, and gave them into the safe keeping of Amadour, who
performed such extraordinary deeds during the war, that they seemed to be
acts as much of despair as of bravery.

22 The last King of Granada was Mahomed Boabdil, dethroned
in 1493. The title may have been assumed, however, by the
leader of an insurrection.—D.

23 As Ferdinand and Isabella had no son, the reference must
be to their daughter’s husband, Philip the Fair of Austria,
son of the Emperor Maximilian I. and father of Charles V.—
B. J.

24 Frederick of Toledo, Marquis of Coria and Duke of Alba,
generally called the old Duke of Alba to distinguish him
from his son.—B. J.

Coming now to the point of my story, I have to relate how his
overboldness was proved by his death. The Moors had made a show of
offering battle, and finding the Christian army very numerous had feigned a
retreat. The Spaniards started in pursuit, but the old Constable and the Duke
of Alba, who suspected the trickery of the Moors, restrained the Prince of
Spain against his will from crossing the river. The Count of Aranda,
however, and the Duke of Cardona crossed, although it was forbidden; and
when the Moors saw that they were pursued by only a few men they faced
about again. The Duke of Cardona was struck down and killed with a blow
of a scimitar, and the Count of Aranda was so grievously wounded that he

was left for dead. Thereupon Amadour came up filled with rage and fury,
and bursting through the throng, caused the two bodies to be taken up and
carried to the camp of the Prince, who mourned for them as for his own
brothers. On examining their wounds the Count of Aranda was found to be
still alive, and was sent in a litter to his home, where he lay ill for a long
time. On the other hand, the Duke’s body was sent back to Cardona.
Meanwhile Amadour, having made this effort to rescue the two bodies,
had thought so little of his own safety that he found himself surrounded by
a large number of Moors. Not desiring his person to be captured any more
than he had captured that of his mistress, nor to break his faith with God as
he had broken faith with her—for he knew that, if he were taken to the King
of Granada, he must either die a cruel death or renounce Christianity—he
resolved to withhold from his enemies the glory either of his death or
capture. So kissing the cross of his sword and commending his body and
soul to God, he dealt himself such a thrust as to be past all help.
Thus died the unhappy Amadour, lamented as deeply as his virtues
deserved. The news spread through the whole of Spain; and the rumour of it
came to Florida, who was at Barcelona, where her husband had formerly
commanded that he should be buried. She gave him an honourable funeral,
(25) and then, without saying anything to her mother or mother-in-law, she
became a nun in the Convent of Jesus, taking for husband and lover Him
who had delivered her from such a violent love as that of Amadour’s, and
from such great affliction as she had endured in the company of her
husband. Thus were all her affections directed to the perfect loving of God;
and, after living for a long time as a nun, she yielded up her soul with
gladness, like that of the bride when she goes forth to meet the bridegroom.

25 The Franciscan monastery of the little village cf
Bellpuig, near Lerida, contains the tomb of Ramon de
Cardona, termed one of the marvels of Catalonia on account
of the admirable sculptures adorning it. One of the
beautiful white marble bas-reliefs shows a number of galleys
drawn up in line of battle, whilst some smaller boats are
conveying parties of armed men to a river-bank on which the
Moors are awaiting them in hostile array. On the frieze of
an arch the Spaniards and Moors are shown fighting, many of
the former retreating towards the water. An inscription
records that the tomb was raised to the best of husbands by
Isabella, his unhappy spouse.

Margaret gives the name of Florida to the wife of the Duke
whom she mentions, but it should be borne in mind that she
has systematically mingled fact with fiction throughout this
story; and that she was alluding to the Duke buried at
Bellpuig seems evident from an examination of the bas-
reliefs mentioned above. Ramon de Cardona was, however, a
more important personage than she pictures him. He became
Charles V.‘s viceroy in Naples, and did not die till 1520,
whereas Margaret’s story appears to end in or about 1513.
Possibly she saw the tomb when in Spain.—Ed.

“I am well aware, ladies, that this long tale may have been wearisome
to some among you, but had I told it as it was told to me it would have been
longer still. Take example, I beg you, by the virtue of Florida, but be
somewhat less cruel; and think not so well of any man that, when you are
undeceived, you occasion him a cruel death and yourselves a life of
sorrow.”
Having had a long and fair hearing Parlamente said to Hircan—
“Do you not think that this lady was pressed to extremities and that she
held out virtuously?”
“No,” said Hircan; “a woman can make no more feeble resistance than
to cry out. If she had been in a place where none could hear her I do not
know how she would have fared. And if Amadour had had more love and
less fear he would not have desisted from his attempt for so little. So this
story will not cause me to change my firm opinion that no man ever
perfectly loved a lady, or was loved by her, that he did not prove successful
if only he went the right way to work. Nevertheless, I must praise Amadour
for having in part done his duty.”
“What duty?” asked Oisille. “Do you call it a lover’s duty to try and
take his mistress by force when he owes her all reverence and submission?”
Here Saffredent took up the discourse.
“Madam,” he said, “when our mistresses hold their state in chamber or
hall, seated at their ease as though they were our judges, we lead them to
the dance in fear; we wait upon them with all diligence and anticipate their
commands; and we are so afraid of offending them and so desirous of doing
them service that those who see us pity us, and often deem us more witless
than brutes. They account us dull and void of understanding, and give praise
to the ladies, whose faces are so imperious and their speech so fair that they
make themselves feared, loved, and honoured by those who only know

them outwardly. But when we are together in private, and love alone can
judge our behaviour, we know full well that they are women and we are
men. Then is the name ‘mistress’ changed to ‘sweetheart,’ and the ‘slave’
becomes a ‘lover.’ As the proverb says—‘By service true and loyalty, do
servants rise to mastery.’ They have honour equally with men, who can give
it to them and can take it away; and seeing us suffer in patience, they should
reward us when they can do so without hurt to their honour.”
“You do not speak of that true honour,” said Longarine, “which is the
greatest happiness this world can give. If every one calls me a virtuous
woman, and I myself know the contrary, the praise I receive only increases
my shame and puts me in secret to still greater confusion. In the same way,
if people condemn me and I know that I am innocent, their condemnation
will only make me the better pleased with myself.”
“In spite of what you all have said,” interposed Geburon, “it seems to
me that Amadour was as noble and virtuous a knight as ever lived, and I
think I can recognise him under his feigned name. Since Parlamente would
not name him, neither will I. But you may rest assured that, if he be the man
whom I have in mind, his heart never knew fear, nor was ever void of love
and bravery.”
“The day has been spent so pleasantly,” said Oisille, “that if the others
are like it I think our talk will make the time pass quickly by. But see where
the sun is, and listen to the abbey bell, which has long been calling us to
vespers. I did not mention this to you before, for I was more inclined to hear
the end of the story than to go to prayers.”
At these words they all rose, and when they reached the abbey they
found that the monks had been waiting for them a full hour and more. After
vespers they went to supper, and during the whole evening they conversed
about the stories they had heard, all of them searching every corner of their
memories to try and make the second day as pleasant as the first. And after
playing many games in the meadow they went to bed, and so made a glad
and happy ending of the first day.

SECOND DAY.
On the Second Day is recounted the first conceit
that presents itself to each.

PROLOGUE.
On the morrow they rose in great eagerness to return to the place
where they had had so much pleasure on the previous day. Each one was
ready with a tale, and was impatient for the telling of it. They listened to the
reading of Madame Oisille, and then heard mass, all commending
themselves to God, and praying Him to grant them speech and grace for the
continuance of their fellowship. Afterwards they went to dinner, reminding
one another the while of many stories of the past.
After dinner, they rested in their apartments, and at the appointed time
returned to the meadow, where day and season alike seemed favourable to
their plans. They all sat down on the natural seat afforded by the green
sward, and Parlamente said—
“Yesterday I told the tenth and last tale; it is therefore for me to choose
who shall begin to-day. Madame Oisille was the first of the ladies to speak,
as being the oldest and wisest, and so I now give my vote to the youngest—
I do not also say the flightiest—for I am sure that if we all follow her
leading we shall not delay vespers so long as we did yesterday. Wherefore,
Nomerfide, you shall lead us, but I beg that you will not cause us to begin
our second day in tears.”
“There was no need to make that request,” said Nomerfide, “for one of
our number has made me choose a tale which has taken such a hold on me
that I can tell no other; and should it occasion sadness in you, your natures
must be melancholy ones indeed.”

TALE XI. (A).

Madame de Roncex, while at the monastery of the Grey Friars
at Thouars, (1) was constrained to go in great haste to a
certain place, and, not looking to see whether the seats
were clean, sat down in a filthy spot and befouled both her
person and clothes; whereupon crying out for assistance, in
the hope that some woman would come and cleanse her, she was
waited on by men, who beheld her in the worst plight in
which a woman could be found. (2)

1 In the department of the Deux-Sèvres.—Ed.

2 This story, given in Boaistuau’s version of Margaret’s
tales, and to be found in most of the MS. copies of the
Heptameron at the ‘Paris Bibliothèque Nationale’, was not
included in the edition issued by Gruget, who replaced it by
a story called The jests made by a Grey Friar, for which
see post, p. 95 et seq.—Ed.

In the household of Madame de la Trémoille there was a lady named
Roncex, who one day, when her mistress had gone to visit the monastery of
the Grey Friars, found herself in great need to go to a certain place whither
her maid could not go in her stead. She took with her a girl named La
Mothe to keep her company, but being modest and unwilling to be seen, left
her in the room, and went alone into a darksome privy, a place used in
common by all the friars, who had given such a good account therein of all
their victuals, that seat and floor, and in sooth the whole place, were thickly
covered with the must of Bacchus and Ceres that had passed through the
friars’ bellies.
The unhappy lady, who was so hard pressed that she had scarcely time
to lift her dress, chanced to sit down in the foulest, dirtiest spot in the whole
place, where she found herself stuck fast as though with glue, her poor hips,
garments, and feet being so contaminated that she durst not take a step or
turn on any side, for fear lest she should meet with something worse.
Thereupon she began to call out as loudly as she could—
“La Mothe, my child, I am ruined and undone!”

The poor girl, who had formerly heard tell of the wickedness of the
Grey Friars, and imagined that some of them were hidden there and were
trying to take her mistress by force, thereupon ran off as hard as she could,
saying to every one she met—
“Come and help Madame de Roncex; the Grey Friars are trying to
ravish her in yonder privy.”
They thereupon hastened thither with all speed, and found the unhappy
lady crying out for assistance, longing for some woman to come and
cleanse her, and with her back parts all uncovered, for she feared to touch
them with her garments lest these also should be defiled.
The gentlemen, coming in at her cries, beheld this fine sight, but could
see nought of the Grey Friars, unless it were their ordure clinging to her
hips; nor did this pass without laughter on their part and great shame on
hers, for instead of having women to cleanse her, she was waited on by
men, who saw her naked, and in the sorriest plight in which a woman could
be found. For this reason, on perceiving them, she soiled what was still
clean, by dropping her garments in order to cover herself, forgetting the
filth that she was in for the shame she felt at sight of the men. And when
she had come out of that foul place it was necessary to strip her naked and
change all her garments before she could leave the monastery. She was
minded to be angry with La Mothe for the aid that she had brought her, but
finding that the poor girl had thought her in a yet more evil plight, she put
aside her wrath and laughed like the rest. (3)

3 It is impossible to identify the lady mentioned in this
story, her name being spelt in so many ways in the various
MSS. of the Heptameron. It is given as Roncex in the copy
here followed, as Roubex in a copy that belonged to Louis
XVIII., and as Roncci in the De Thou MS., whilst Boaistuau
printed it as Roucey. The Madame de la Trémoille, alluded to
at the outset, is believed by Lacroix and Dillaye to have
been Anne de Laval (daughter of Guy XV., Count of Laval, and
of Charlotte of Aragon, Princess of Tarento), who married
Francis de la Trémoille, Viscount of Thouars, in 1521, and
was by her mother a cousin of Queen Margaret. Possibly,
however, the reference is to Gabrielle de Bourbon, wife of
Louis II. de la Trémoille, a lady of exemplary piety, who
erected the beautiful Renaissance chapel of the château of
Thouars.—L. & Ed.

“I think, ladies,” said Nomerfide, “that this story has proved neither
long nor melancholy, and that I have given you what you expected.”
At this the company laughed heartily, and Oisille said—“The story is
indeed nasty and unclean, yet, knowing the persons who fared in this
manner, we cannot consider it unwelcome. Gladly would I have seen the
faces of La Mothe and of the lady to whom she brought such timely aid.
But now,” she added to Nomerfide, “since you have finished so soon, give
your vote to some one whose thoughts are of a graver turn.”
“Since you desire me to atone for my fault,” answered Nomerfide, “I
give my vote to Dagoucin, whose discretion is such that he would die rather
than say anything foolish.”
Dagoucin then thanked her for the esteem in which she held his good
sense, and thus began—“The story I am minded to relate is intended to
show you how love blinds the greatest and most honourable hearts, and how
hard it is to overcome wickedness by any kindness whatsoever.”

[The Grey Friar telling his Tales]

TALE XI. (B).

Of the jests made by a Grey Friar in his sermons. (1)

1 See ante, p. 89, note 2, and post. Appendix B.

Near the town of Bléré in Touraine there is a village called St. Martin-
le-Beau, whither a Grey Friar belonging to the monastery at Tours was
summoned to preach during the seasons of Advent and Lent. This friar, who
was more garrulous than learned, and now and then found himself at a loss
for matter to eke out his hour, would thereupon begin telling tales which
more or less agreeably satisfied the good villagers.
One Holy Thursday he preached about the Paschal Lamb, and while
speaking of how it was eaten at night, seeing that there were present at the
preaching some handsome young ladies of Amboise, who were newly
arrived to keep Easter at the village, and to stay there for a few days
afterwards, he wished to surpass himself, and thereupon asked all the
women-folk whether they knew what it was to eat raw flesh at night. “I will
tell you what it is, ladies,” he said, whereat the young men of Amboise, who
had just arrived with their wives, sisters, and nieces, and who had no
knowledge of the pilgrim’s humour, began to be scandalised; though on
listening further their indignation gave place to laughter, even when he said
that to eat the lamb it was needful to have one’s loins girt, one’s feet in
one’s shoes, and one’s hand on one’s staff.
The friar, seeing them laugh at this, and guessing the reason,
immediately corrected himself. “Well,” said he, “to have shoes on one’s feet
and a staff in one’s hand; ‘tis all one.”
That this sally was received with laughter you will readily believe.
Even the ladies could not refrain from merriment, and for them he added
other diverting sayings. Then finding the time was nearly up, and wishing
the ladies to be well pleased with him when they departed, he said to them
—“Now, fair ladies, when you are chatting presently with your gossips, you
will be asking one another: ‘Who, pray, is this Master Friar, that speaks out
so boldly? He must be a brisk fellow.’ I will tell you, ladies, yes, I will tell

you, and be not astonished if I speak out boldly, for I am of Anjou, at your
service.”
With these words he ended his sermon, leaving his hearers more
disposed to laugh at his foolish speeches than to weep in memory of our
Lord’s Passion which was then being commemorated.
The other sermons that he preached during the festival had much the
same value. You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their
Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen,
yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles. So when Easter Tuesday
came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such
folks as he are no niggards, he said—
“I am bound to thank you, ladies, for the liberality you have shown to
our poor monastery, and yet I cannot forbear telling you that you have
hitherto not duly considered the nature of our wants. You have for the most
part given us chitterlings, but of these we ourselves have no lack. God be
praised, our monastery is indeed full of them. What then can we do with so
many? I will tell you. My advice, ladies, is that you should mix your hams
with our chitterlings; in this way you would bestow fine alms.”
Then, continuing his sermon, he brought into it certain scandalous
matter, and, whilst discoursing upon it somewhat bluntly and quoting
sundry examples, he said in apparent amazement—
“Truly, ladies and gentlemen of Saint-Martin, I am greatly astonished
that you should be scandalised so unreasonably at what is less than nothing,
and should tell tales of me wherever you go, saying: ‘It is a big business;
who could have thought that the father would have got his landlady’s
daughter with child?’ A monk get a girl with child!” he continued;
“forsooth, what a wonder! But hark you, fair ladies, would you not rather
have had cause for wonderment, had the girl acted thus by the monk?”
“Such, ladies, was the wholesome food on which this worshipful
shepherd fed the Lord’s flock. And so brazen was he, that after committing
the sin, he spake openly of it in the pulpit, where nought should be said that
tends to aught but the edification of one’s neighbour, and above all to the
glory of God.”
“Truly,” said Saffredent, “he was a master monk—I should have liked
him nearly as well as Brother Anjibaut, who gets credit for all the jests that
are spoken in merry company.”

“For my part, I can see nothing laughable in such mockery,” said
Oisille, “especially in such a place.”
“You forget, madam,” said Nomerfide, “that at that time, though it was
not so very long ago, the good villagers, and indeed most of the dwellers in
the large towns, who think themselves cleverer than other people, had
greater regard for such preachers as he than for those who purely and
simply preached the holy Gospel to them.”
“However that may be,” said Hircan, “he was not wrong in asking for
hams in exchange for chitterlings, for in hams there is far more eating. And
even if some devout creature had understood him amphibologically, as I
believe he wished to be understood, neither he nor his brethren would have
fared badly any more than the wench that had her bag full.”
“But how impudent of him,” said Oisille, “to pervert the meaning of
the text to suit his fancy, thinking that he had to do with beasts like himself,
and shamelessly trying to entice the poor little women so that he might
teach them how to eat raw flesh at night.”
“True,” said Simontault; “but you forget that he saw before him those
young tripe-sellers of Amboise in whose tub he would fain have washed his
——— shall I name it? No, but you understand me—and have treated them
to a taste of it, not roasted, but stirring and frisking, so as to please them the
more.”
“Softly, softly, Simontault,” said Parlamente; “you forget yourself.
Have you laid aside your accustomed modesty to don it only in time of
necessity?”
“No, madam, no,” said he; “‘twas the unworthy monk that led me
astray. Wherefore, that we may return to the matter in hand, I beg
Nomerfide, who caused my offence, to give her vote to some one who will
make the company forget our common fault.”
“Since you include me in your transgression,” said Nomerfide, “I will
choose one who will atone for our failings, that is Dagoucin. He is so
discreet that to save his life he would not say a foolish thing.”

[The Gentleman killing the Duke]

TALE XII.

The Duke of Florence, having continually failed to make
known to a certain lady the love he bore her, confided in
her brother, and begged his assistance that he might attain
his ends. This, after many remonstrances, the brother agreed
to give, but it was a lip-promise only, for at the moment
when the Duke was expecting to vanquish her whom he had
deemed invincible, the gentleman slew him in his bed, in
this fashion freeing his country from a tyrant, and saving
both his own life and the honour of his house. (1)

1 The basis of this story is historical. The event here
described—one of the most famous in the annals of
Florence—furnished Alfred de Musset with the subject of his
play Lorenzaccio, and served as the foundation of The
Traitor, considered to be Shirley’s highest achievement as
a dramatic poet. As Queen Margaret’s narrative contains
various errors of fact, Sismondi’s account of the affair, as
borrowed by him from the best Italian historians, is given
in the Appendix, C—Eu.

Ten years ago there reigned in the city of Florence a Duke of the house
of Medici who had married the Emperor’s natural daughter, Margaret. (2)
She was still so young that the marriage could not be lawfully
consummated, and, waiting till she should be of a riper age, the Duke
treated her with great gentleness, and to spare her, made love to various
ladies of the city, whom he was wont to visit at night, whilst his wife was
sleeping.

2 The Duke here referred to was Alexander de’ Medici, first
Duke of Florence, in which city he was born in 1510. His
mother, a slave named Anna, was the wife of a Florentine
coachman, but Lorenzo II. de’ Medici, one of this woman’s
lovers, acknowledged him as his offspring, though, according
to some accounts, his real father was one of the popes,
Clement VII. or Julius II. After the Emperor Charles V. had
made himself master of Florence in 1530, he confided the
governorship of the city to Alexander, upon whom he bestowed
the title of Duke. Two years later Alexander threw off the
imperial control, and soon afterwards embarked on a career
of debauchery and crime. In 1536, Charles V., being desirous

of obtaining the support of Florence against France, treated
with Alexander, and gave him the hand of his illegitimate
daughter, Margaret. The latter—whose mother was Margaret
van Gheenst, a Flemish damsel of noble birth—was at that
time barely fourteen, having been born at Brussels in 1522.
The Queen of Navarre’s statements concerning the
youthfulness of the Duchess are thus corroborated by fact.
After the death of Alexander de’ Medici, his widow was
married to Octavius Farnese, Duke of Parma, who was then
only twelve years old, but by whom she eventually became the
mother of the celebrated Alexander Farnese. Margaret of
Austria occupies a prominent place in the history of the
Netherlands, which she governed during a lengthy period for
her brother Philip II. She died in retirement at Ortonna in
Italy in 1586.—L. and Ed.

Among these there was one very beautiful, discreet, and honourable
lady, sister to a gentleman whom the Duke loved even as himself, and to
whom he gave such authority in his household that his orders were feared
and obeyed equally with the Duke’s own. And moreover the Duke had no
secrets that he did not share with this gentleman, so that the latter might
have been called his second-self. (3)

3 The gentleman here mentioned was the Duke’s cousin,
Lorenzo di Pier-Francesco de’ Medici, commonly called
Lorenzino on account of his short stature. He was born at
Florence in 1514, and, being the eldest member of the junior
branch of the Medici family, it had been decided by the
Emperor Charles V. that he should succeed to the Dukedom of
Florence, if Alexander died without issue. Lorenzino
cultivated letters, and is said to have possessed
considerable wit, but, on the other hand, instead of being a
high-minded man, as Queen Margaret pictures him, he was a
thorough profligate, and willingly lent a hand in
Alexander’s scandalous amours. The heroine of this story is
erroneously described as Lorenzino’s sister; in point of
fact she was his aunt, Catherine Ginori. See Appendix, C.—
Ed.

Finding the gentleman’s sister to be a lady of such exemplary virtue
that he was unable to declare his passion to her, though he sought all
possible opportunities for doing so, the Duke at last came to his favourite
and said to him—
“If there were anything in this world, my friend, that I might be
unwilling to do for you, I should hesitate to tell you what is in my mind,