“So far as I can see,” said Hircan, “you do not love your husbands except for your own sakes.  If they are what you want them to be, you are very fond of them; but if they fall into the slightest error towards you, they lose on a Saturday the toil of an entire week.  Thus you are minded to rule, and I for my part will consent to it provided, however, that all other husbands agree.”

“It is reasonable,” said Parlamente, “that man should rule us as our head, but not that he should forsake us or treat us ill.”

“God has provided so wisely,” said Oisille, “both for man and for woman, that I hold marriage, if it be not abused, to be the goodliest and securest condition imaginable, and I am sure that, whatever they may seem to do, all here present think the same.  And if the man claims to be wiser than the woman, he will be the more severely blamed should the fault come from him.  But enough of such talk.  Let us now see to whom Dagoucin will give his vote.”

“I give it,” he said, “to Longarine.”

“You do me a great pleasure,” she replied, “for I have read a story that is worthy to follow yours.  Since we are set upon praising the virtuous patience of ladies, I will show you one more worthy of praise than she of whom we have just been speaking.  And she is the more deserving of esteem in that she was a city dame, and therefore one of those whose breeding is less virtuous than that of others.”

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[Illustration:  083a.jpg The Lady of Tours questioning her Husband’s Mistress]

[The Lady of Tours questioning her Husband’s Mistress]

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TALE XXXVIII.

A towns-woman of Tours returned so much good for all the evil treatment she had received from her husband, that the latter forsook the mistress whom he was quietly maintaining, and returned to his wife. (1)

1 It is probable that the incidents related in this tale occurred between 1460 and 1470.  They will be found recorded in the Menagier de Paris. (See Baron Pichon’s edition, 1847, vol. i. p. 237).  A similar narrative figures in some editions of Morlini’s tales, notably the Novello, Fabello, et Comedies, Neapoli, 1520.  We further find it in Gueudeville’s translation of Erasmus’s Colloquies (Dialogue sur le mariage, collogues, &c., Leyden, 1720, vol. i. p. 87), and Mr. Walter Keily has pointed out (the Heptameron, Bohn, 1864) that William Warner worked the same incidents into his poem Albion’s England, his stanzas being reproduced in Percy’s Reliques under the title of The Patient Countess.—­L. and Ed.

In the city of Tours there dwelt a chaste and comely townswoman, who, by reason of her virtues, was not only loved but feared also and respected by her husband.  Nevertheless, with all the fickleness of men who grow weary of ever eating good bread, he fell in love with a farm tenant (2) of his own, and would oft-time leave Tours to visit the farm, where he always remained two or three days; and when he came back to Tours he was always in so sorry a plight that his wife had much ado to cure him, yet, as soon as he was whole again, he never failed to return to the place where pleasure caused him to forget all his ills.