The poor girl felt sorry for him. She pleaded with him not to despair, and not to make her lose her kind master as well as her mistress. He replied: ‘My dear, it cannot be. I’m dying. Look how cold my face is. Come a bit nearer with your cheeks and warm me up a bit!’ So saying, he thrust his hand into her bosom! She did get a little bit difficult, but he told her not to be alarmed. They must get to know one another a bit better, he said. At this point he grabbed her in his arms and threw her on to the bed. The wife had been left on her own with the cross and a drop of holy water. She had not spoken a word for two whole days. But now she started to shout as loud as her feeble voice allowed her to.
‘Aaah! I’m not dead yet! I’m not dead yet!’ she cried shaking her fist at the pair. ‘Swine! Brute! I’m not dead yet!’
The husband and the serving girl jumped up. The wife was so enraged that her anger burnt up the catarrhal humours that had prevented her speaking, and she was able to hurl at them all the abuse she could devise. Indeed, from that moment on she began to get better, and for ever after nagged her husband for not loving her enough!
*
‘There you are, Ladies. That just shows what hypocrites men are. It doesn’t take much to console them when they’re mourning the loss of their wives, does it?’
‘How do you know he hadn’t heard that that was the best way to cure his wife?’ asked Hircan. ‘He’d been treating her very considerately, and that didn’t cure her, so he thought he’d see if the opposite would work any better. And he discovered it worked very well. I’m surprised you women have so frankly admitted your true colours. It’s not feminine sweetness, it’s feminine rancour that cures them!’
‘Without a doubt, that sort of thing would make me jump up from the grave, let alone from a sick-bed!’ said Longarine.
‘What was he doing wrong, though,’ asked Saffredent, ‘in seeking consolation, when he thought she was dead? Everyone knows that marriage is only supposed to be binding for life, and that afterwards one is set free.’
‘Yes,’ replied Oisille, ‘free from your vows and obligations, but anyone with a true heart is never released from the ties of love. It didn’t take him long to recover from his grief, for he could not even wait till his wife had breathed her last!’
‘What I find most strange,’ said Nomerfide, ‘is the fact that even with the spectacle of death and the cross in front of his nose he wasn’t deterred from offending the Lord.’
‘That’s a fine argument!’ exclaimed Simontaut. ‘Do you mean to say you’re not shocked by such goings-on, provided that they don’t take place anywhere near a church or a graveyard?’
‘You can make fun of me as much as you like,’ replied Nomerfide, ‘but all the same, meditating on death is enough to chill the heart of anyone, however young.’
‘I’d agree with you wholeheartedly,’ said Dagoucin, ‘if it weren’t for the fact that a certain princess once told me that the contrary is the case.’
‘In other words,’ said Parlamente, ‘she told you a story to that effect. Well, if so, I invite you to take my place and tell it to us.’
Dagoucin began thus.
STORY SEVENTY-TWO
It all happened in what was, after Paris, the finest town in France. There was a luxuriously endowed hospital in this town run by a prioress assisted by about fifteen nuns. In a separate wing there was a prior and about eight monks to say the offices. The nuns, being occupied with looking after the patients, only said their paternosters and the hours of Our Lady. One day a man lay dying, a poor man of the town, and all the nuns gathered round his bed. They did all they could to restore his health, then sent for one of their monks to confess him. As he was becoming weaker, they administered extreme unction, and he gradually lost the faculty of speech. However, because he lingered on [and seemed still able to hear], the nuns did what they could to give him a few words of comfort. But they grew tired of this, and when it got late and night came they retired one by one to bed, leaving one of the youngest behind to lay out the corpse. With her there remained one of the monks. He was a very austere man, both in word and deed, and the young nun was even more in awe of him than she was of the prior himself. Having cried ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ in the poor man’s ear for a while, they concluded he was well and truly dead. So together they laid him out, and as they carried out this last act of mercy, the monk began to speak of the misery that is life, and the blessedness that is death. On and on he went. Midnight struck. The poor girl listened attentively to his pious words, and gazed at him with tears in her eyes. This gave him considerable pleasure – so much in fact that even as he spoke of the life to come, he started to put his arms round her as if he longed to transport her to Paradise! The poor girl just listened. She regarded him as the most pious man in the place, and dared not resist. Realizing this, the wicked monk, still prating about God, had his way with her. They must have been prompted to the deed by the Devil, for there had never been any question of such a thing before. He reassured her that a sin committed in secret was not counted as a sin in the eyes of God. In a case of this kind, he told her, two persons without ties did not commit any offence, provided it did not cause a public scandal. To prevent that happening, he instructed her to take care not to mention it in her confessions to anyone except himself.
Thus they separated, and went their different ways. She left first, and as she went past the chapel, she decided to go in and say her prayers as usual. As she spoke the words ‘Virgin Mary’, it suddenly dawned on her that she herself was no longer a virgin. And it was neither love nor violence that had brought it about, but her own foolish timidity. She wept and wept as if her heart would break. The monk, who could hear her sobbing in the distance, guessed that she had had a change of heart and was anxious lest he should not be able to enjoy the same favours again. To forestall that possibility, he followed her into the chapel, where she lay prostrate in front of the statue of the Virgin. He spoke to her sharply, telling her that if she really had a guilty conscience she should come and confess it to him, and need not repeat the act, if she did not want to, for she was at liberty to choose without sin.
The stupid nun, thinking that she would make amends to God, went to make her confession to the monk. By way of imposing penance, he swore to her that she was not really sinning at all by loving him, and assured her that a little holy water was enough to wash away a peccadillo such as that. She had more faith in him than in God, and went back after a time to do his bidding. Finally she became pregnant. This distressed her so much that she pleaded with the prioress to have the monk thrown out of the convent, for she knew that the man was so cunning that he could not fail to seduce her again. But the prior and the [prioress], who were on good terms with one another, treated her with contempt, saying that she was big enough to look after herself where men were concerned, and that in any case the monk in question was a very good man. Eventually, consumed by guilt and remorse, she passionately implored them to grant her leave to journey to Rome, for she thought that if she made her confession at the feet of the Pope, she could recover her virginity. They readily gave their consent, preferring her to go against the rule of her order and leave the convent on a pilgrimage, than have her remain enclosed and develop an even more particular conscience! What if she were to become so desperate as to [disclose] the kind of life that was being led in the convent? So they provided her with the money for the journey.
Now God so willed that [the poor nun should arrive in Lyons during the time when the Duchess of Alençon, who was later to become the Queen of Navarre, was in the town. One evening after vespers in the church of Saint John, the Duchess was on her knees in front of the crucifix in the rood-loft.] It was here that, along with three or four of her ladies, she had come discreetly to perform a novena.* While she was thus at prayer she heard somebody come up the stair, and in the lamp light she could see it was a nun. In order to listen to the nun’s devotions, the Duchess moved to the corner of the altar. The nun, thinking that she was alone, knelt do
wn, and began to beat her breast, weeping most piteously and crying out that she had sinned.
‘Alas! My God, have mercy on me a poor sinner!’ she sobbed over and over again.
To find out what was the matter, the Duchess approached her, saying: ‘My dear, what is the matter? Where are you from? What brings you to this place?’
The poor nun did not recognize the Duchess, and said, ‘Alas! I am in desperate straits, and there is no one but God to whom I can turn. I am praying that He will enable me somehow to speak to the Duchess of Alençon. She is the only one to whom I could tell my troubles, for I am sure that if there is anything anyone can do, she will do it.’
‘My dear,’ replied the Duchess, ‘you may talk to me just as you would to her – for I am one of her closest friends?’
‘Forgive me if I do not tell you,’ said the nun, ‘for I can only tell my secret to the Duchess herself.’
So the Duchess told her that her wish was granted and that she need have no fear to speak quite openly. The poor girl threw herself at her feet, weeping once more and crying out loud. Then she told her the sorry story which you have already heard. The Duchess so comforted her that, while not discouraging her from continuing to repent of her sin, she persuaded her to abandon her idea of going to Rome. Then she sent her back to her convent, with letters to the bishop of the diocese, instructing him to have the scandalous monk removed.
*
‘This is a story that I was told by the Duchess herself, and it’s a story that shows you, Ladies, that Nomerfide’s precept does not apply to everybody. For the couple in the story had to handle the dead man while they were laying him out, but they were none the less affected by their wanton lusts.’
‘There’s an original idea,’ said Hircan, ‘and one, I think, which no one has tried before – to speak words of death while performing the works of life!’
‘To commit a sin like that is not,’ said Oisille, ‘performing the works of life! For do we not know that sin engenders death?’
‘But,’ said Saffredent, ‘these poor people would certainly not be thinking about that particular point of theology. The daughters of Lot made their father drunk in order to conserve the human race, and it was the same with this poor couple. They wanted to repair what death had destroyed, to create a new body to replace the old. For this reason I see nothing wrong in what happened, except that the poor nun was made so sad and wept and wept and continually returned to the cause of her tears.’
‘I’ve seen plenty like her,’ said Hircan. ‘They weep for their sins, and at the same time laugh over the pleasures they’ve had.’
‘I can guess who that remark is aimed at,’ said Parlamente, ‘and [it seems to me] that their laughter has lasted long enough, and that it is time for the tears to start to flow.’
‘Be quiet!’ said Hircan. ‘The tragedy that began with laughter is not yet at its end!’
‘To change the subject, then,’ she said, ‘it occurs to me that Dagoucin has departed from the decision we made only to tell stories that are amusing. The one he’s just told us was too sad.’
‘You did say,’ replied Dagoucin, ‘that [we] would only tell stories about foolish things, and I don’t think that I have failed in that respect. However; for a more amusing story, I hand over to Nomerfide. I’m sure she will make up for my lapse.’
‘Well, I have a story ready to tell you,’ she began, ‘and it’s a very appropriate one after the one you’ve told. It’s about death, and it’s about a monk. So please all listen carefully.’
* Variant reading given in the de Thou MS: Let us not place our trust in our own virtues, but in that we are inscribed in the Book of Life, from which for the multiplicity of our sins He may erase us.
* An allusion to medieval mystery plays: after the Passion and Resurrection, the mystery of the Vengeance depicted the punishment of Christ’s slayers.
* The 1559 edition adds: The husband said: ‘They dare not touch money with their bare hands, but they like to feel our wives’ thighs, which are even more dangerous.’
* The original is: vous scavez doncques bien nouer. ‘Nouer’ meant both ‘to swim’ and ‘to tie’. In the second sense it had sexual connotations.
* Saffredent quotes from the Oratio for the Feast of the Holy Innocents: ‘not by speaking, but by dying have they confessed’.
* Maistresse, amye, serviteur, amy, respectively, in the original.
* The quotation is from the famous poem by Alain Chartier.
*Reference to the Decretals of Gregory IX, Liber iv, Titulus xv: De frigidis et maleficiatis, et impotentia coeundi (‘On men who are impotent and under magic charms, and on the inability to copulate’).
* A legal formula. Under ecclesiastical law exchange of promises followed by sexual intercourse sufficed to establish marriage.
* Proverb used by Villon in a famous passage (Testament, I. 265: ‘Let’s leave the monastery where it is?)
* Matthew 15:14: ‘Let them alone.’ The verse continues: ‘… they be blind leaders of the blind…’.
* Actually Isaiah 38:14.
* De Thou gives the following variant for Geburon’s reply: ‘So this is how Geburon began: “Ladies, I had decided not to tell you any more stories concerning the misdeeds perpetrated by members of the religious orders, being aware that those who have their honour at heart in this world ought to be more afraid of offending them than of offending all the princes of Christendom, considering the power to speak and do evil which they possess. All this has been much better expounded than I could ever do by Jean de Meung in his chapter about False-Seeming, where he gives them such power so to act that, after reading the Romance of the Rose, I am as much desirous of gaining their friendship and staying in their good books as I am of winning worldly honour and glory. However, I have recently heard told to Monsieur de Saint Vincent, the Emperor’s ambassador, a story which is so extraordinary that it ought not to be allowed to slide into oblivion.”’
* In the métayage system the owner provides stock and seed and takes a proportion of the produce as rent.
* The passage from ‘If there really weren’t…’ to ‘… that subject’ is based on the Gruget edition.
* The custom was supposed by theologians to commemorate the slaughter of the innocents celebrated on 28 December. It was also a feast of fools and in sixteenth-century France had become a notorious excuse for sexual pranks.
* The de Thou manuscript has a version of this tale which is different in style and narrative organization, although the events described are essentially the same.
* De Thou has: was not of great beauty.
* See p. 164. Allusion to the poem by Alain Chartier, quoted in story 12.
* Romans 16:16: ‘Salute one another with an holy kiss.
* Return whence you came, my soul, so hard are the trials of my life.
* An aid to digestion made with cinnamon and sugar.
* Story 70 is in fact a transposition of the thirteenth-century poem La chastelaine de Vergi.
* Daniel 13:22 (Vulgate): ‘I am hemmed in on all sides.
* Although the medieval source concerns the de Vergy family, the Heptaméron manuscripts have du Verg(i)er (”of the orchard”).
* Ixion is being confused with Prometheus.
* The spelling of the de Thou manuscripts represents regional pronunciation.
* A nine-day cycle of devotions.
The Heptameron Page 58
