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[Illustration:  049a.jpg The Lady embracing the Supposed Friar]

[The Lady embracing the Supposed Friar]

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TALE XXXV.

The affection of a lady of Pampeluna—­who, thinking that there was no danger in spiritual love, had striven to insinuate herself into the good graces of a Grey Friar—­was subdued by her husband’s prudence in such wise that, without telling her that he knew aught of the matter, he brought her mortally to hate that which she had most dearly loved, and wholly to devote herself to him.

In the town of Pampeluna there lived a lady who was accounted beautiful and virtuous, as well as the chastest and most pious in the land.  She loved her husband, and was so obedient to him that he had entire trust in her.  This lady was constantly present at Divine service and at sermons, and she used to persuade her husband and children to be hearers with her.  She had reached the age of thirty years, at which women are wont to claim discretion rather than beauty, when on the first day of Lent she went to the church to receive the emblem of death. (1) Here she found that the sermon was beginning, the preacher being a Grey Friar, a man esteemed holy by all the people on account of his great austerity and goodness of life, which made him thin and pale, yet not to such a point as to prevent him from being one of the handsomest men imaginable.

The lady listened piously to his sermon, her eyes being fixed on this reverend person, and her ears and mind ready to hearken to what he said.  And so it happened that the sweetness of his words passed through the lady’s ears even to her heart, while the comeliness and grace of his countenance passed through her eyes and so smote her soul that she was as one entranced.  When the sermon was over, she looked carefully to see where the Friar would celebrate mass, (2) and there she presented herself to take the ashes from his hand.  The latter was as fair and white as any lady’s, and this pious lady paid more attention to it than to the ashes which it gave her.

     1 To receive the ashes on Ash Wednesday.—­M.

     2 That is, in which of the chapels.  A friar would not
     officiate at the high altar.—­Ed.

Feeling persuaded that a spiritual love such as this, with any pleasure that she might derive from it, could not wound her conscience, she failed not to go and hear the sermon every day and to take her husband with her; and they both gave such great praise to the preacher, that they spoke of nought beside at table or elsewhere.  At last this supposed spiritual fire became so carnal that the poor lady’s heart in which it glowed began to consume her whole body; and just as she had been slow to feel the flame, so did she now swiftly kindle, and feel all the delights of passion, before she knew that she even was in love.