SIXTH DAY.

Prologue

Tale LI. Cruelty of the Duke of Urbino, who, contrary to the promise he had given to the Duchess, hanged a poor lady that had consented to convey letters to his son’s sweetheart, the sister of the Abbot of Farse.

Tale LII. Merry trick played by the varlet of an apothecary at AlenÇon on the Lord de la TireliÈre and the lawyer Anthony BacherÉ, who, thinking to breakfast at his expense, find that they have stolen from him something very different to a loaf of sugar.

Tale LIII. Story of the Lady of NeufchÂtel, a widow at the Court of Francis I., who, through not admitting that she has plighted her troth to the Lord des Cheriots, plays him an evil trick through the means of the Prince of Belhoste.

Tale LIV. Merry adventure of a serving-woman and a gentleman named Thogas, whereof his wife has no suspicion.

Tale LV. The widow of a merchant of Saragossa, not wishing to lose the value of a horse, the price of which her husband had ordered to be given to the poor, devises the plan of selling the horse for one ducat only, adding, however, to the bargain a cat at ninety-nine.

Tale LVI. Notable deception practised by an old Grey Friar of Padua, who, being charged by a widow to find a husband for her daughter, did, for the sake of getting the dowry, cause her to marry a young Grey Friar, his comrade, whose condition, however, was before long discovered.

Tale LVII. Singular behaviour of an English lord, who is content merely to keep and wear upon his doublet the glove of a lady whom he loves.

Tale LVIII. A lady at the Court of Francis I., wishing to prove that she has no commerce with a certain gentleman who loves her, gives him a pretended tryst and causes him to pass for a thief.

Tale LIX. Story of the same lady, who, learning that her husband is in love with her waiting-woman, contrives to surprise him and impose her own terms upon him.

Tale LX. A man of Paris, thinking his wife to be well and duly deceased, marries again, but at the end of fifteen years is forced to take his first wife back, although she has been living meantime with one of the chanters of Louis XII.

SEVENTH DAY.

Prologue

Tale LXI. Great kindness of a husband, who consents to take back his wife twice over, spite of her wanton love for a Canon of Autun.

Tale LXII. How a lady, while telling a story as of another, let her tongue trip in such a way as to show that what she related had happened to herself.

Tale LXIII. How the honourable behaviour of a young lord, who feigns sickness in order to be faithful to his wife, spoils a party in which he was to have made one with the King, and in this way saves the honour of three maidens of Paris.

Tale LXIV. Story of a gentleman of Valencia in Spain, whom a lady drove to such despair that he became a monk, and whom afterwards she strove in vain to win back to herself.

Tale LXV. Merry mistake of a worthy woman, who in the church of St. John of Lyons mistakes a sleeping soldier for one of the statues on a tomb, and sets a lighted candle on his forehead.

Tale LXVI. How an old serving-woman, thinking to surprise a Prothonotary with a lady, finds herself insulting Anthony de Bourbon and his wife Jane d’Albret.

Tale LXVII. How the Sire de Robertval, granting a traitor his life at the prayers of the man’s wife, set them both down on a desert island, and how, after the husband’s death, the wife was rescued and brought back to La Rochelle.

Tale LXVIII. The wife of an apothecary at Pau, hearing her husband give some powder of cantharides to a woman who was godmother with himself, secretly administered to him such a dose of the same drug that he nearly died.

Tale LXIX. How the wife of one of the King’s Equerries surprised her husband muffled in the hood of their servant-maid, and bolting meal in her stead.

Tale LXX. Of the love of a Duchess of Burgundy for a gentleman who rejects her advances, for which reason she accuses him to the Duke her husband, and the latter does not believe his oaths till assured by him that he loves the Lady du Vergier. Then the Duchess, having drawn knowledge of this amour from her husband, addresses to the Lady du Vergier in public, an allusion that causes the death of both lovers; and the Duke, in despair at his own lack of discretion, stabs the Duchess himself.

EIGHTH DAY.

Prologue

Tale LXXI. The wife of a saddler of Amboise is saved on her deathbed through a fit of anger at seeing her husband fondle a servant-maid.

Tale LXXII. Kindness of the Duchess of AlenÇon to a poor nun whom she meets at Lyons, on her way to Rome, there to confess to the Pope how a monk had wronged her, and to obtain his Holiness’s pardon.