"What meats?" said Valnebon. "The King himself has none better or more nourishing."

"But I should also like to know," said Dura.s.sier, "whether your keeper made you earn your bread properly?"

Valnebon, suspecting that he had been understood, could not hold from swearing.

"G.o.d's grace!" said he. "Had I indeed comrades where I believed myself alone?"

Perceiving this dispute, wherein he had part like the rest, Astillon laughed and said--

"We all serve one master, and have been comrades and friends from boyhood; if, then, we are comrades in the same good fortune, we can but laugh at it. But, to see whether what I imagine be true, pray let me question you, and do you confess the truth to me; for if that which I fancy has befallen us, it is as amusing an adventure as could be found in any book."

They all swore to tell the truth if the matter were such as they could not deny.

Then said he to them--

"I will tell you my own fortune, and you will tell me, ay or nay, if yours has been the same."

To this they all agreed, whereupon he said--

"I asked leave of the King to go on a journey."

"So," they replied, "did we."

"When I was two leagues from the Court, I left all my following and went and yielded myself up prisoner."

"We," they replied, "did the same."

"I remained," said Astillon, "for seven or eight days, and lay in a closet where I was fed on nothing but restoratives and the choicest viands that I ever ate. At the end of a week, those who held me captive suffered me to depart much weaker in body than I had been on my arrival."

They all swore that the like had happened to them.

"My imprisonment," said Astillon, "began on such a day and finished on such another."

"Mine," thereupon said Dura.s.sier, "began on the very day that yours ended, and lasted until such a day."

Valnebon, who was losing patience, began to swear.

"'Sblood!" said he, "from what I can see, I, who thought myself the first and only one, was the third, for I went in on such a day and came out on such another."

Three others, who were at the table, swore that they had followed in like order.

"Well, since that is so," said Astillon, "I will mention the condition of our gaoler. She is married, and her husband is a long way off."

"'Tis even she," they all replied.

"Well, to put us out of our pain," said Astillon, "I, who was first enrolled, shall also be the first to name her. It was my lady the Countess, she who was so extremely haughty that in conquering her affection I felt as though I had conquered Caesar."

[Said Valnebon--(6)]

6 It is probable that the angry Valnebon is speaking here, and that his name has been accidentally omitted from the MSS. At all events the three subsequent paragraphs show that these remarks are not made by Astillon, who declines the other speaker's advice, and proposes a scheme of his own.-- Ed.

"To the devil with the jade, who gave us so much toil, and made us believe ourselves so fortunate in winning her! Never was there such wantonness, for while she kept one in hiding she was practising upon another, so that she might never be without diversion. I would rather die than suffer her to go unpunished."

Each thereupon asked him what he thought ought to be done to her, saying that they were all ready to do it.

"I think," said he, "that we ought to tell the King our master, who prizes her as though she were a G.o.ddess.

"By no means," said Astillon; "we are ourselves able to take vengeance upon her, without calling in the aid of our master. Let us all be present to-morrow when she goes to ma.s.s, each of us wearing an iron chain about his neck. Then, when she enters the church, we will greet her as shall be fitting."

This counsel was highly approved by the whole company, and each provided himself with an iron chain. The next morning they all went, dressed in black and with their iron chains twisted like collars round their necks, to meet the Countess as she was going to church. And as soon as she saw them thus attired, she began to laugh and asked them--

"Whither go such doleful folk?"

"Madam," said Astillon, "we are come to attend you as poor captive slaves constrained to do your service."

The Countess, feigning not to understand, replied--

"You are not my captives, and I cannot understand that you have more occasion than others to do me service."

Thereupon Valnebon stepped forward and said to her--

"After eating your bread for so long a time, we should be ungrateful indeed if we did not serve you."

She made excellent show of not understanding the matter, thinking by this seriousness to confound them; but they pursued their discourse in such sort that she saw that all was discovered. So she immediately devised a means of baffling them, for, having lost honour and conscience, she would in no wise take to herself the shame that they thought to bring upon her. On the contrary, like one who set her pleasure before all earthly honour, she neither changed her countenance nor treated them worse than before, whereat they were so confounded, that they carried away in their own bosoms the shame they had thought to bring upon her.

"If, ladies, you do not consider this story enough to prove that women are as bad as men, I will seek out others of the same kind to relate to you. Nevertheless I think that this one will suffice to show you that a woman who has lost shame is far bolder to do evil than a man."

There was not a woman in the company that heard this story, who did not make as many signs of the cross as if all the devils in h.e.l.l were before her eyes. However, Oisille said--

"Ladies, let us humble ourselves at hearing of so terrible a circ.u.mstance, and the more so as she who is forsaken by G.o.d becomes like him with whom she unites; for even as those who cleave to G.o.d have His spirit within them, so is it with those that cleave to His opposite, whence it comes that nothing can be more brutish than one devoid of the Spirit of G.o.d."

"Whatever the poor lady may have done," said Ennasuite, "I nevertheless cannot praise the men who boasted of their imprisonment."

"It is my opinion," said Longarine, "that a man finds it as troublesome to conceal his good fortune as to pursue it. There is never a hunter but delights to wind his horn over his quarry, nor lover but would fain have credit for his conquest."

"That," said Simontault, "is an opinion which I would hold to be heretical in presence of all the Inquisitors of the Faith, for there are more men than women that can keep a secret, and I know right well that some might be found who would rather forego their happiness than have any human being know of it. For this reason has the Church, like a wise mother, ordained men to be confessors and not women, seeing that the latter can conceal nothing."

"That is not the reason," said Oisille; "it is because women are such enemies of vice that they would not grant absolution with the same readiness as is shown by men, and would be too stern in their penances."

"If they were as stern in their penances," said Dagoucin, "as they are in their responses, they would reduce far more sinners to despair than they would draw to salvation; and so the Church has in every sort well ordained. But, for all that, I will not excuse the gentlemen who thus boasted of their prison, for never was a man honoured by speaking evil of a woman."

"Since they all fared alike," said Hircan, "it seems to me that they did well to console one another."

"Nay," said Geburon, "they should never have acknowledged it for the sake of their own honour. The books of the Round Table (7) teach us that it is not to the honour of a worthy knight to overcome one that is good for naught."

7 Queen Margaret was well acquainted with these (see _ante_, vol. iii. p. 48). In a list drawn up after her father's death, of the two hundred volumes of books in his library, a most remarkable one for the times, we find specified several copies of "Lancelot," "Tristan," &c, some in MS. with miniatures and illuminated letters, and others printed on parchment. Besides numerous religious writings, volumes of Aristotle, Ovid, Mandeville, Dante, the Chronicles of St. Denis, and the "Book of the Great Khan, bound in cloth of gold," the library contained various works of a character akin to that of the _Heptameron_. For instance, a copy of the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ in print; a French translation of Poggio's _Facetio_, also in print, and two copies of Boccaccio in MS., one of them bound in purple velvet, and richly illuminated, each page having a border of blue and silver. This last if still in existence would be very valuable.--Eu.

"I am amazed," said Longarine, "that the unhappy woman did not die of shame in presence of her captives."