Tales and Trials of Love [Bilingual ed.] 0772721661, 9780772721662

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Jeanne Flore

Tales and Trials of Love A B i l i n g u al E d i t i o n a n d s t u d y

Kelly Digby Peebles Marta Rijn Finch

Ed i te d a n d t ra n s l ate d by P oe ms t r a n s l ate d by

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 33

TALES AND TRIALS OF LOVE

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 33

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

S e r ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. S e r ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens Volume 1, 2009

Pernette du Guillet Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Karen Simroth James Translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 6, 2010

Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder Volume 2, 2009

Antonia Pulci Saints’ Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Elissa B. Weaver Translated by James Wyatt Cook Volume 7, 2010

Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde Volume 3, 2010 Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera The True Medicine Edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Volume 4, 2010 Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda Edited and translated by Janet Levarie Smarr Volume 5, 2010

Valeria Miani Celinda, A Tragedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky Volume 8, 2010 Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers Edited and translated by Lewis C. Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Volume 9, 2010 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sophie, Electress of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence Edited and translated by Lloyd Strickland Volume 10, 2011

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing Edited by Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino Volume 11, 2011 Sister Giustina Niccolini The Chronicle of Le Murate Edited and translated by Saundra Weddle Volume 12, 2011 Liubov Krichevskaya No Good without Reward: Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Brian James Baer Volume 13, 2011 Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell The Writings of an English Sappho Edited by Patricia Phillippy With translations by Jaime Goodrich Volume 14, 2011 Lucrezia Marinella Exhortations to Women and to Others if They Please Edited and translated by Laura Benedetti Volume 15, 2012

Margherita Datini Letters to Francesco Datini Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Volume 16, 2012 Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix English Women Staging Islam, 1696–1707 Edited and introduced by Bernadette Andrea Volume 17, 2012 Cecilia Del Nacimiento Journeys of a Mystic Soul in Poetry and Prose Introduction and prose translations by Kevin Donnelly Poetry translations by Sandra Sider Volume 18, 2012 Lady Margaret Douglas and Others The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women’s Book of Courtly Poetry Edited and introduced by Elizabeth Heale Volume 19, 2012 Arcangela Tarabotti Letters Familiar and Formal Edited and translated by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Volume 20, 2012

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Emily C. Francomano Volume 21, 2013

Sophia of Hanover Memoirs (1630–1680) Edited and translated by Sean Ward Volume 25, 2013

Barbara Torelli Benedetti Partenia, a Pastoral Play: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken Volume 22, 2013

Anne Killigrew “My Rare Wit Killing Sin”: Poems of a Restoration Courtier Edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell Volume 27, 2013

François Rousset, Jean Liebault, Jacques Guillemeau, Jacques Duval and Louis De Serres Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) Edited and translated by Valerie Worth-Stylianou Volume 23, 2013 Mary Astell The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England Edited by Jacqueline Broad Volume 24, 2013

Katherine Austen Book M: A London Widow’s Life Writings Edited by Pamela S. Hammons Volume 26, 2013

Tullia d’Aragona and Others The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Julia L. Hairston Volume 28, 2014 Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza The Life and Writings of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza Edited and translated by Anne J. Cruz Volume 29, 2014

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

S e r ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. S e r ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Russian Women Poets of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Amanda Ewington Volume 30, 2014 Jacques du Bosc L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women Edited and translated by Sharon Diane Nell and Aurora Wolfgang Volume 31, 2014 Lady Hester Pulter Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda Edited by Alice Eardley Volume 32, 2014

JEANNE FLORE

Tales and Trials of Love, Concerning Venus’s Punishment of Those Who Scorn True Love and Denounce Cupid’s Sovereignty A BILINGUAL EDITION AND STUDY • Edited and translated by KELLY DIGBY PEEBLES Poems translated by MARTA RIJN FINCH

Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Toronto 2014

Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance Tel: 416/978–7074 Email: [email protected] Fax: 416/978–1668 Web: www.itergateway.org Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Victoria University in the University of Toronto Tel: 416/585–4465 Email: [email protected] Fax: 416/585–4430 Web: www.crrs.ca © 2014 Iter Inc. & Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Iter and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies gratefully acknowledge the generous support of James E. Rabil, in memory of Scottie W. Rabil, toward the publication of this book. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Flore, Jeanne, author Tales and trials of love, concerning Venus’s punishment of those who scorn true love and denounce Cupid’s sovereignty : a bilingual edition and study / Jeanne Flore ; edited and translated by Kelly Digby Peebles ; poems translated by Marta Rijn Finch. (The other voice in early modern Europe. The Toronto series ; 33) Includes translation of Contes amoureux. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. Text in French with English translation on facing pages. ISBN 978-0-7727-2166-2 (pbk.). ISBN 978-0-7727-2167-9 (pdf) 1. Love stories, French. 2. Love stories, French—Translations into English. 3. Flore, Jeanne— Translations into English. I. Finch, Marta Rijn, translator II. Peebles, Kelly Digby, 1977–, editor, translator III. Victoria University (Toronto, Ont.). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies IV. Iter Inc. V. Title. VI. Series: Other voice in early modern Europe. Toronto series ; 33 PQ1623.F6A23 2014 843’.3 C2014-902758-3 C2014-902759-1 Cover illustration: Venus and Cupid, c.1524 (oil on limewood), Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8–1543) / Offentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, Switzerland / The Bridgeman Art Library REV 116837. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting and production: Iter Inc.

For the two women whom I most admire, in celebration of their retirement: my mother, Rosemary Digby and my mentor, Mary McKinley

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction The Other Voice Imprimé nouvellement à Lyon Comptes amoureux: Content and Analysis Mismatched Marriage in Renaissance Literature La Pugnition de l’amour contempné and the roman sentimental Telling Tales of Love in Lyon: La querelle des Amyes Love and Marriage as Religious Dissidence in Comptes amoureux A Note on the French Text Translator’s Note: Prose Translator’s Note: Poetry

xiii 1 1 9 14 33 38 41 47 49 52 54

Tales and Trials of Love Madame Egine Minerve to Noble Ladies-in-love Epistle Tale One Tale Two Tale Three Tale Four Tale Five Tale Six Tale Seven Jeanne Flore to the Reader

61 63 65 115 153 167 197 219 251 261

Translation Notes

262

Appendix 1

295

Appendix 2

299

Appendix 3

303

Bibliography

307

Index

327

Acknowledgments I thank Mary McKinley for first introducing me to Jeanne Flore and to Renaissance Lyon, and for her continued good will, patience, insight, enthusiasm, and general encouragement of her students—current, former, and unofficial. I thank Jeff Persels for “converting” me to the study of sixteenth-century French literature, and for his and Brigitte’s continued friendship and support. Karen James has offered many helpful comments as this project developed from its early stages in the dissertation and related conference papers. I have learned much from Leah Chang—from her astute readings of related female-authored works and her pertinent observations and suggestions that greatly improved this volume. I deeply appreciate her generous and kindhearted advice. I also am incredibly grateful to Marta Finch, whose graceful and inspired translations of the poems bring elegance to this volume, and to Al Rabil, who patiently guided me through the publication process and gave me the confidence to take a leap when I didn’t feel ready. He has gone to great lengths to help develop the careers of junior scholars. I also admire Margaret King’s scholarship and devotion to this series and thank her for her thoughtful suggestions and assistance in bringing this project to a close. At CRRS/ Iter, I thank Margaret English-Haskin for her attention to detail and kindly tolerance for my many emails and our brilliant, patient, and accommodating typesetter, Anabela Piersol. At Clemson University, the Faculty Research Development Program of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities granted me a course release in spring 2012 that allowed me to complete the introduction to this volume. Valued colleague Joseph Mai has been immensely supportive in helping me to protect the time needed for this project and for my research in general. My dear friend and colleague Amy Sawyer lent her keen eye to proof every tale of the translation. Librarian Ed Rock, as well as our Interlibrary Loan Department at Cooper Library, have been most helpful in acquiring and borrowing books and articles necessary for my research. Leslie Williams, fellow bibliophile and model teacher-scholar-colleague, often lifted my spirxiii

xiv Acknowledgments its with his ever cheerful, encouraging, and uncommonly genuine counsel. Gabriel-André Pérouse and Régine Reynolds-Cornell did much to generate interest in Comptes amoureux with their respective editions and succession of articles, and Michèle Clément has sustained that interest with insightful articles on authorship and collaboration in Renaissance Lyon. The brilliant scholar and pedagogue Dominique Varry continues to elucidate the fascinating world of Lyon’s printing networks. The knowledge gleaned from his remarkable introduction to descriptive bibliography at l’Institut d’histoire du livre in Lyon— expertly organized by Sheza Moledina—has been an invaluable complement to my study of literature. Kristian Jensen’s fascinating and impressively erudite introduction to incunabula opened my eyes to the commercial aspects of book culture, as well as the overlap between manuscript and print. The staff of the fonds ancien of the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon kindly allowed me to photograph their copies of Comptes amoureux and La Déplorable fin de Flamète and is always most helpful and accommodating, especially Gilles Caillat and Monique Hulvey. Throughout this project, my husband John Peebles was unflaggingly patient, caring, and supportive; my parents tirelessly and tolerantly cared for our children when I needed to work long hours— both at home and in Lyon; Lucy and Brady provided much-needed comic relief and unconditional love; my brother, Jonny Digby, offered his editorial expertise by helping me get started on the footnotes and reading numerous bits and pieces, and my mother painstakingly read every single page of the manuscript as many times as it took.

Introduction The Other Voice KELLY DIGBY PEEBLES

What we know about Jeanne Flore, if indeed there was a Jeanne Flore, we glean solely from her printed works, a total of seven tales, each introduced and narrated by a female storyteller. Despite its relatively small volume, Jeanne Flore’s body of work significantly elucidates important questions about women’s status and roles in the culture of Renaissance France, particularly in the city of Lyon. Jeanne Flore’s contemporaries Pernette du Guillet and Louise Labé also lived in Lyon; each had a volume of poetry printed in her name, and prominent male authors dedicated poems to both women in praise of their beauty and learning. Some thirty years after Comptes amoureux was first published, the Dames des Roches would host a literary coterie in Poitiers, publish both poetry and prose, and gain the recognition of noted male and female intellectuals.1 Unlike these women, we have no written record of Jeanne Flore aside from her two published works.2 We do not know who this author was. Or even if she was. Scholars and students of French Renaissance literature generally accept that Jeanne Flore is a pseudonym, and names ranging from Hélisenne de Crenne, Clément Marot, Étienne Dolet, Bonaventure des Périers, Maurice Scève, and even Marguerite de Navarre have been suggested as possible authors,

1. Works by these contemporaries and near-contemporaries of Jeanne Flore are included in this series. See Pernette du Guillet, Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. Karen Simroth James, trans. Marta Rijn Finch (Toronto: CRRS, 2010), Louise Labé, Complete Poetry and Prose, ed. Deborah Lesko Baker, trans. Annie Finch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), and Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les dames Des Roches, ed. and trans. Anne R. Larsen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 2. Jeanne Flore does earn a reference in La Bibliothèque d’Antoine du Verdier, seigneur de Vauprivas (Lyon: Barthélémy Honorat, 1585): “Jeanne Flore a escrit Comptes amoureux touchant la punition que fait Venus de veux qui mesprisent le vray amour. {imprimé à Lyon 8°, à la marque d’Icarus, & à Paris par Põcet le Preux 1532,” (761).

1

2 Introduction contributors, or editors of the collection.3 And furthermore, the name Jeanne Flore appears as part of the title, Comptes amoureux par madame Jeanne Flore, as if to signal that the name is part of the fictional construct. Mireille Huchon has generated a great deal of discussion with her study Louise Labé, une créature de papier, in which she proposes that Labé’s Euvres (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1555) is an elaborate literary hoax in which Lyon’s intellectual elite were involved.4 There is convincing evidence of this type of literary deception occurring in sixteenth-century Italy. Ortensio Lando posed as both Isabella Sforza and Lucrezia Gonzaga in order to cultivate heterodox religious views, for example.5 But the lack of archival evidence of a writer, particularly 3. A number of new and previously published studies about Jeanne Flore were gathered in Actualité de Jeanne Flore, ed. Diane Desrosiers-Bonin, Éliane Viennot, and Régine ReynoldsCornell (Paris: Champion, 2004). See also Gabriel-André Pérouse’s introduction to Contes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore (Lyon: CNRS, 1980). Régine Reynolds-Cornell has proposed several hypotheses about Jeanne Flore’s identity. See “Introduction,” in Les Contes amoureux (Saint-Etienne : Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 2005), 9–39. Additional references are listed in the bibliography. 4. See Mireille Huchon, Louise Labé, une créature de papier (Geneva: Droz, 2006). Huchon suggests that a similar hoax is at play in Jeanne Flore’s works (66–69). The Société internationale pour l’étude des femmes de l’Ancien régime maintains a page on its website, “Louise attaquée!,” http://www.siefar.org/debats/louise-labe.html, that chronicles contributions to a debate on Huchon’s hypothesis. See also Dominique Varry’s unpublished conference paper, “Sur quelques pages d’une édition de Louise Labé,” presented at the colloquium Copier et contrefaire à la Renaissance. Faux et usage de faux. (Paris, 2009). Varry reveals that the copy of the 1555 edition of Labé’s Euvres on which Huchon bases her hypothesis was significantly altered in the nineteenth century, calling into question aspects of Huchon’s argument based on this copy’s material presentation. See Dominique Varry’s personal website, where he summarizes the paper on the page, “Dévoiler les faux,” http://dominique-varry.enssib.fr/mpde/34. 5. On Sforza, see Francine Daenens, “Isabella Sforza: Beyond the Stereotype,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Center, 2000), 35–56. On Gonzaga, see Meredith Ray, “Textual Collaboration and Spiritual Partnership in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Case of Ortensio Lando and Lucrezia Gonzaga,” Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2009): 694–747. Ray suggests: “It is clear from their repeated literary invocations of one another that Lando and Gonzaga had a long and mutually beneficial association: Lando by using Gonzaga’s name and persona both to authorize and enliven his works, Gonzaga by the celebrity and fame she gained through Lando’s repeated invocations of her virtue” (697).

Introduction 3 of a woman writer, is not altogether unusual for the time due to the social stigma associated with women’s speech, the ambiguity of the author-figure, and the various overlapping, often ambivalent methods of publishing and participating in the literary world.6 In Renaissance Europe—and from the very early days of European literary history—authorship was not necessarily tied to notions of originality, authority, or ownership. In the medieval oral and manuscript traditions, authorship could be a cumulative experience; texts were renewed, altered, or expanded with each iteration.7 In the era of print, authors increasingly gained control over the text; movable type allowed for a more stable, self-contained, and reliable—though not infallible—medium.8 While a paradigm shift in the production and availability of books was underway, as well as in the ways that books presented the figure of the author, these transitions were by no means seamless or structured.9 Indeed, as David McKitterick demonstrates in Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830, the still flourishing manuscript and oral traditions and the now burgeoning printing industry were not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, 6. See James’s introduction to Pernette du Guillet’s Complete Poems, 11. 7. See Andrew Bennett, The Author (New York: Routledge, 2005), 3. 8. Again, see Andrew Bennett’s The Author. He offers a concise discussion of the etymology of the term “author” (6–8). He also succinctly summarizes the transition from manuscript to print culture, noting the greater possibility of uniformity of a work and assertion of one’s individuality. Whether positive or negative, the result is “a new relationship between text and author. This new, commercial relationship is expressed in a strengthening of the sense of the individuality and privacy of acts of reading and writing, and in the eventual development of legally constituted rights of authorial ownership” (46). See also Cynthia J. Brown, Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). Brown suggests that the turn of the sixteenth century marks a paradigm shift in the concept of intellectual property, and she demonstrates that the desire to protect one’s work was yet in its nascent stages of development. On the fallible, human nature of the fledging printing industry, see D. F. McKenzie, “Printers of the Mind,” Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, ed. Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, S. J. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 13–85. 9. See David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), particularly chapter 1, “The printed word and the modern bibliographer” (1–21). Here, McKitterick discusses the overlap between scribal and print culture.

4 Introduction the manuscript and print traditions continued to thrive in parallel, to contribute to their mutual success, and even to depend on each other. Among the elite, lavishly illustrated manuscripts continued to carry a mark of prestige. Several printers of incunabula—Peter Schoeffer, who began his printing career with Johannes Gutenberg in Germany, and Antoine Vérard, a prolific printer and bookseller in Paris, for example—had previously worked as scribes, and, McKitterick explains, the printing industry provided a good bit of work to manuscript artists who would manually decorate printed works with miniatures and ornamental illuminations.10 For students and scholars, scribal copying of borrowed books for personal use—the pecia system—allowed for private study of academic texts. Furthermore, collections and catalogs of books, known as bibliotheca, continued to intermingle manuscript and print books well into the seventeenth century.11 These early modern bibliotheca provided two types of knowledge to readers and collectors of the period: organizational guidance (enumerative lists of book collections and items contained therein, including groupings by author, genre, medium, etc.) and theoretical guidance (abstract surveys of bodies of knowledge, a sort of survey or inventory of existing literature).12 For today’s readers of sixteenthcentury French literature, the bibliothèques of Antoine Du Verdier and François de La Croix du Maine offer an insightful indication as to the various manners of participating in literary culture, particularly of women engaging in that culture. Among the myriad male authors listed, the Bibliothèque d’Antoine du Verdier (1585) also includes references to women writers, among them Lyonnais women, whose works survive only in collected volumes of poetry, such as that of Jeanne Gaillarde, or circulated only in manuscript copies, such as Anne 10. See chapter 3, “Pictures in Motley,” in McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 53–96. Of particular interest, McKitterick observes: “Because it increased the number of books in circulation, and engendered demand for yet more, for a few generations the spread of printing actually increased demand for miniaturists and other decorators” (67). 11. Again, see McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 11–12. He notes that the curators of the French Royal Library continued to emphasize manuscript acquisitions over printed books in the early seventeenth century, and its catalog did not differentiate between manuscript and printed books until 1622. 12. See McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 13.

Introduction 5 de Graville’s French translations and adaptations of works by Alain Chartier and Giovanni Boccaccio.13 Of these, a handful of luxurious manuscripts survive, but less expensive copies also were sold in bookshops alongside printed books.14 François de La Croix du Maine, in his own Bibliothèque contemporary to that of Du Verdier, praises a number of women writers for their learning and wit whose writings had not yet been published, but whose literary activities he either witnessed in intellectual gatherings or heard about from fellow literati.15 The manuscript and oral traditions did not immediately coalesce with the growing printing industry to create an autonomous print culture. Likewise, various means of composing books continued to coexist. A book need not take shape under the influence of a single individual. Anonymous authorship, ambiguous authorship, collective authorship, and explicit naming of an author were simply additional literary conventions that practitioners in the book trade—printers, scribes, editors, or authors—could employ to package a book with a deliberate strategy for its sale in mind.16 Indeed, Jeanne Flore’s print13. On Anne de Graville, see Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England, ed. Diana Robin, Anne Larsen, Carol Levin (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2007), s.v. “Anne de Graville.” 14. See La Bibliothèque d’Antoine du Verdier, 762. On other women writers mentioned in this work, see also, for example, Anne de Graville, whose translation of the Romant des deux amans Palamon et Arcita du Verdier claims to have seen in manuscript in the bookshop of Monsieur le Comte d’Urfé (42–43), as well as the revelations of St. Brigitte, translated into French and copied by hand for sale in Sala’s bookshop in Lyon (132), and verse written by Catherine de Navarre, sister of Henry, king of Navarre (144). Du Verdier also praises the poetic and musical talents of Clémence de Bourges, dedicatee of Louise Labé’s Euvres (218). 15. See François Grudé, seigneur de La Croix du Maine, Premier Volume de La Bibliotheque du Sieur de La Croix du Maine (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1584), for example, the entry on Françoise Hubert  : “l’un des plus excellens Poëtes tragiqs de nostre siecle […]. Elle n’a encores mis ses escrits en lumiére. [One of the most excellent writers of tragic poetry in our century […]. She has not yet published her writings].” (100). 16. See Margaret J. M. Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), which focuses on the material conditions of authorship in early seventeenth-century Britain. Marcy L. North, in The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in Tudor-Stuart England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), offers a brief and helpful overview of uses of anonymity in her introduction. She notes, for example: “The anonymity that the print industry disseminated sometimes took the form of a missing author’s name, but not always. Pseudonyms, ambiguous initials, and the names of institu-

6 Introduction ers and booksellers printed and packaged the product differently, and those changes illuminate the fascinatingly intricate nature of the literary world in which Comptes amoureux was created and published. Authors, editors, printers, and booksellers collaborated and conspired competitively, in effect creating books collectively, thereby cultivating literary communities that both shaped and were shaped by the multiple manners of producing and of consuming books: the printing industry, the scribal tradition, and intellectual coteries.17 In an introductory epistle ostensibly written by Jeanne Flore to another female storyteller, the author alludes to all of these aspects of literary life, illustrating conveniently and concisely how women contributed to book culture at the time.18 Jeanne Flore’s work was printed with two distinct titles, by at least four different printers and in two different locations, first in Lyon and then in Paris. Four of Jeanne Flore’s tales, which Gabriel-André Pérouse19 terms the noyau tales, or the core of the collection, were printed together as La Pugnition de l’amour contempne, extraict de l’amour fatal de madame Jane Flore (Lyon: Françoys Juste, 1540 and Paris: Denys Janot, 1541). Three additional tales, a final poem to the reader and an extended frame narrative passage were added to create a second edition of the book, printed with the title Comptes amoureux par madame Jeanne Flore touchant la punition de ceulx qui condemnent et mesprisent le vray amour (Lyon: s.n., s.d. and Paris: Jean Real for Arnoul l’Angelier, 1543). Notwithstanding its puzzling authorship, Comptes amoureux presents itself as a female-authored work, and from it rises a voice—the “Other Voice”—that challenges traditional tions or sponsoring groups gave anonymity a textuality that allowed it to compete with the author’s name for popularity and marketability” (3). 17. Michèle Clément discusses this practice at length in “Co-élaborations à Lyon entre 1532 et 1542: des interventions lyonnaises en réseau sur les ‘récits sentimentaux ?’ ” Réforme, humanisme, renaissance 71 (2011): 35–44. See also her “Nom d’auteur et identité littéraire : Louise Labé Lyonnaise. Sous quel nom être publiée en France au XVIe siècle ?” Réforme, humanisme, renaissance 70 (2010): 73–101. 18. For a discussion of the introductory epistle, see below, 15–22. 19. Gabriel-André Pérouse and a team of scholars at the Centre Lyonnais d’Étude de l’humanisme (CLEH) edited the first critical edition of Jeanne Flore’s tales, Contes amoureux (Lyon: CNRS, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1980).

Introduction 7 misconceptions about women.20 With its first edition in 1540, this brief and eclectic collection of tales becomes the vanguard of female literary production in Lyon, for an upsurge in female-authored and female-centric literary works would follow in its wake. The voice of this woman writer, and the voices of the women within its fictional framework, question the validity of long-held prejudices related to chastity, power, speech and knowledge.21 In Jeanne Flore’s Comptes amoureux, women have agency and influence. In several of these tales, women succeed in shaping their own lives, and in all tales they dispute or subvert authority. In this literary world, women are storytellers and in a sense, archivists and propagandists: they narrate, record and distribute their writings in print. Jeanne Flore’s storytellers demonstrate a breadth of knowledge of the literary tradition, drawing from ancient, medieval, and contemporary literature. Likewise, the storytellers claim an equally broad knowledge of the romantic tradition, claiming firsthand experience in emotional, spiritual and physical love. Indeed, the storytellers refer to one another, and to their readers, as dames amoureuses (ladies-inlove). This gesture at once points to a literary ancestor, The Decameron, which Boccaccio also dedicates to ladies-in-love, and to the aim of these stories, which each woman reiterates as she introduces her tale. There is one dissident voice within this group of women who refuses to revel in love’s joys, and Jeanne Flore’s storytellers seek to convert this nonbeliever. This dissident voice represents the Old Voice, the stance of classical literature and of philosophy, of early church fathers and of jurisprudence, a negative attitude perpetuated in medieval literature that women are biologically, psychologically, and intellectually inferior to men. The Old Voice maintained that a woman’s place was in the home or, somewhat less frequently yet also acceptable, within the walls of the convent. By the early modern period the Old Voice was deeply rooted in European cultural and intellectual life. While this voice was beginning to meet friction, its long-established momentum 20. While the authorship of Comptes amoureux is uncertain, I refer to Jeanne Flore as the author and use feminine pronouns when necessary. 21. See the series editors’ introduction, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” available online at http://www.othervoiceineme.com/OVIntro.pdf.

8 Introduction was difficult to restrain, and its persistent circulation slow to divert. To contradict these traditional notions was unseemly and disorderly. Indeed, it was associated with, and suggestive of, lust and excess. The ingenuity of this odd little book is that its author exploits this scandalous image of prurience and impropriety to question social convention and imagine a better, happier existence for women. While Jeanne Flore’s storytellers freely admit to their physical desire, the lack of restraint they claim to practice in the frame narrative22 is not necessarily the example put forward in their tales. Jeanne Flore and her storytellers do, indeed, urge their readers to experience love and to respond kindly to potential suitors. Those who do not do so reap severe punishment. On the other hand, of the seven tales, not one of them suggests a life of unbridled, indiscriminate promiscuity without consequence. There are certain rules to this game. And Comptes amoureux does, in fact, participate in a type of game, a lively literary game. Jeanne Flore converses with, responds to, and contradicts other writers whose works consider various notions of love and marriage, a body of literature now known as the querelle des Amyes, an offshoot of the century-old querelle des femmes, or “woman question.”23 Works associated with the querelle des femmes—Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies (1405), for example—debate woman’s capacity for both virtue and virtuosity. Themes and motifs by which literary works of many genres broach and respond to this “question” became ubiquitous in the early modern period and decidedly associated with ideas of female impropriety and impiety. Women who frequented courtly and literary circles were at once praised for their learning and accomplishments and blamed for their perceived disrespect of tradition.24 The querelle des Amyes is also a “woman 22. The frame narrative is the extradiegetic space, i.e., the frame, that precedes and follows the tales. Here, the storytellers introduce their tales and respond, if only briefly, to one another. 23. The series editors discuss the querelle des femmes in their introduction, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.” 24. Julie Campbell explains in her Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe: A Cross-Cultural Approach (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 1–2: “In short, the querelle provided topoi for most genres of early modern writing. Moreover, during the period addressed in this study, approximately 1530–1650, it was inextricably related to perceptions of women defying traditional mores that included provocative behaviors by the cortigiane oneste, or honest courtesans, of Italy, the early Italian actresses, and the ladies of the French and

Introduction 9 question,” but here, it is more specifically a question concerning the woman-in-love. Within this revised context, what is at issue is neither woman’s spiritual and moral fortitude nor her intellect, but rather the place love occupies in her life. The woman-in-love faces the question of whether she must experience love from afar, as an impossible, unachievable ideal, outside of wedlock in an illicit, clandestine affair, or within the bond of marriage. And the dilemmas of the woman-in-love were of particular interest in the intellectual and literary world of midsixteenth-century Lyon, a place with unique and unusual circumstances that inspired and incubated equally unique and unusual ideas. As the sixteenth century progressed, books became the currency of ideas, and in Renaissance Lyon, a thriving book trade and other prosperous commercial enterprises contributed to an economy that was of international importance.

Imprimé nouvellement à Lyon25 Situated at the confluence of the Rhône and Saone rivers and along important land- and water-based trade routes between northern and southern Europe, Renaissance Lyon was a place where many people, goods, and ideas converged. The city was home to a number of prominent Italian and German banking and printing families,26 and it was a English courts and literary circles. Such women were admired for their humanist educations and their abilities as poets, musicians, orators, and conversationalists, but some were also reviled for their behaviors in matters regarding love and marriage and for their breaching of traditional gender boundaries. The combination of admiration and dismay acted as a catalyst for numerous writers of the period.” Campbell presents an insightful overview of historical implications of the querelle des femmes and an overview of recent scholarship in her “Introduction” (1–19). 25. I borrow this heading from the colophon of Denys de Harsy’s edition of Comptes amoureux, which reads: “Fin des Comptes amoureux imprimés nouvellement à Lyon.” The location is one of the few bibliographical signposts that is available in this edition. On the colophon in the hand-press period, see John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors, 8th ed. (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2004), s.v. “Colophon.” 26. The international population was of such importance in Lyon that expatriate residents were organized into “nations,” including the Florentine, Lucchese, Milanese, and German nations. See Jacqueline Boucher, Présence italienne à Lyon à la Renaissance (Lyon: LUGD, 1994), 14–22. On Italians in the printing industry, see 57–66, and on banking and finance, 75–97.

10 Introduction frequent stopover for merchants, lawyers, and scholars, as well as for royals and nobles who followed the court’s progress27 or participated in military maneuverings in Italy.28 From the late fifteenth century on, Lyon hosted four large, annual fairs, each fifteen days in length. This international marketplace allowed Lyon’s burgeoning industries—textiles (particularly silk), spices, and books—to thrive and contributed to enormous population growth in the first half of the sixteenth century.29 The city’s two annual book fairs were among the most important in Europe and provided a dependable market and a valuable meetingplace where book merchants, printers, and journeymen established commercial relationships, surveyed their competition, and publicized their printed and forthcoming works.30 Lyon’s geographical and economic separation from the capital of Paris, which was the administrative, judicial, and theological center of France, afforded its inhabitants and those passing through a certain independence and shelter from the dominant social, intellectual, and religious traditions.31 Although the city had neither a university nor 27. Lavish entries were prepared for the arrivals of dignitaries and royals into the city. Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève was involved in at least two entries: that of King Henry II and Queen Catherine de Medici in 1548 and that of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este in 1540. The latter was named archbishop of Lyon by François Ier in 1539; he was the brother of Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, whose wife, Duchess Renée de France (also known as Renata of Ferrara), was the sister-in-law of François Ier, as her sister was Queen Claude de France. See Boucher, Présence italienne, 10. 28. During the reign of François Ier, France engaged in a series of military campaigns in Italy, motivated by a deep-seated rivalry with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Although François Ier was able to capture the duchy of Milan in 1515, he was captured by Imperial forces ten years later at the Battle of Pavia and held in Madrid until the 1526 Treaty of Madrid. 29. Lyon’s population grew from 30,000 at the beginning of the sixteenth century to around 55,000 by mid century, an increase of over 80%. See Huchon, Louise Labé, 25. On Italian imports in Lyon, e.g., spices and textiles, see Boucher, Présence italienne, 27–34. 30. See Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book and the Impact of Printing, 1450–1800, trans. David Gerard (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2010), especially the section “Business Methods at the Time of the Book-Fairs,” 224–33. 31. Karen James offers a panorama of Renaissance Lyon in the introduction to Pernette du Guillet, Complete Poems, 3–9. See also Huchon, Louise Labé, 15–69, for a substantial overview of the economic, cultural, and literary atmosphere of Renaissance Lyon and Dominique Varry’s unpublished conference presentation, “Round about the Rue Mercière:

Introduction 11 a parlement—or perhaps because it housed neither—money, goods, and ideas, including literary, cultural, and religious trends, circulated quickly, in great volume, and relatively easily in Lyon.32 Royal and local authorities sought to protect the longevity and profitability of the fairs and granted liberal financial and legal privileges to buyers and sellers who came to the city for these annual events. But all during the year a busy printing industry flourished and practiced its trade at the heart of Lyon.33 Only Paris and Venice rivaled the size and success of Lyon’s book trade.34 A large number and wide range of books were printed and sold along the rue Mercière (Merchant Street) and in the surrounding neighborhood of St-Nizier on the presqu’île, a peninsula extending between the Rhône and Saone rivers, the crowded, narrow streets of which were lined with commercial stalls and boutiques. There, many of Lyon’s printers, booksellers, and practitioners of the related trades (papermaking, type-founding, and binding, for example) set up shop. There, the relatively sophisticated and culturally varied population of authors and readers went to print, to buy, and to bind their books. Lyndan Warner intriguingly describes the tightly woven web of networks that drove the book trade in Renaissance France, and she demonstrates how their imprints shaped the ideas of man and woman at the time. Printers, booksellers, and authors had intertwined relationships that could be mutually beneficial, competitive, and antagonistic.35 Associations could extend beyond the local market, linking cities, particularly Lyon and Paris, by deliberate business arrangeThe People of the 18th Century Book-Trade in Lyon,” available on his personal website, http://dominique-varry.enssib.fr/textes_inedits. 32. See Jean-Pierre Gutton’s “Introduction” to chapter 3, “Renaissance et XVIIe siècle: Pour un temps, une capitale de l’occident,” in Lyon, l’humaniste: depuis toujours ville de foi et de révolte, ed. Claude Royon (Paris: Les Éditions Autrement, 2004), 59–66. 33. Natalie Zemon Davis estimates that by the 1550s, the printing industry of Lyon employed between 500 and 600 people and produced several hundreds of books each year. See “Le Monde de l’imprimerie humaniste: Lyon,” in Histoire de l’édition, ed. Henri-Jean Martin, Roger Chartier, and Jean-Pierre Vivet (Paris: Promodis, 1983), 1:255–77. 34. See Henri-Jean Martin’s “Les Imprimeurs et l’humanisme” in chapter 3 of Royon, Lyon, l’humaniste, 67–74. 35. See Lyndan Warner, The Ideas of Man and Woman in Renaissance France: Print, Rhetoric and Law (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011).

12 Introduction ments and by the surreptitious piracy of books that their colleagues had already printed or were planning to print. Those involved in the book trade worked together and against one another to fashion the market, and they deliberately packaged certain types of books in a manner that would clearly place them in dialogue with the larger literary world—as complements and as competition. Leah Chang focuses specifically on how female-authored books broke into the literary marketplace in early modern France. Chang artfully demonstrates the importance of the combined effect of a book’s textual content and its physical presentation, the result of complex and deliberate interactions among writers, editors, printers, and booksellers. Books presented as having a female author not only suggest their commercial or cultural viability, but also their strategic participation in the shaping of gendered identities.36 Floyd Gray also draws attention to the intricate interplay among printers, authors, and readers, arguing that the growth of the printing industry profoundly affected what people read in Renaissance France, allowing potentially controversial material to nudge its way into the marketplace. Controversy sold books, thereby voicing discourses that often were suppressed or divisive due to their marginal—or marginalizing—nature, including misogynist, feminist, autobiographical, homosexual, and medical discourses.37 Noted scholars Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin further the notion that those working in the printing industry had a marked influence on the reading public’s tastes, focusing on deliberate, strategic typographical decisions made by the Lyonnais editor-printer pair of François Rabelais and Françoys Juste.38 Febvre and Martin argue that 36. See Leah L. Chang’s “Introduction” in her Into Print: the Production of Female Authorship in Early Modern France (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009), 17–25. In subsequent chapters, she discusses the female author figures of the Des Roches, Louise Labé, Dame Hélisenne, and Marie de Gournay. 37. See Floyd Gray’s “Introduction” to his Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–5. 38. In the first half of the sixteenth century, roman script, the type used by the renowned Venetian printer of humanist works, Aldus Manutius, became one of prestige in the printing world. In Lyon and in Paris, type founders and printers copied and spread the use of this script, including the renowned printers Joost Bade, Henri Estienne, and Galliot du Pré, among others. See Febvre and Martin The Coming of the Book, 82–3. Joseph Dane, however, in Out of Sorts: On Typography and Print Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Introduction 13 Rabelais and Juste intentionally employed an outdated, traditional, gothic type for printing works steeped in Christian humanism, including Rabelais’s own Pantagruel (1532) and Clément Marot’s poetry collections, such as L’Adolescence clémentine (1533). Doing so would impart an air of crudeness to these books, suggesting that these were unsophisticated, inexpensive volumes for popular consumption, thereby inviting readers from a variety of social strata to contemplate their new ideas. It is within the larger socio-cultural context of Renaissance Lyon that we should read Comptes amoureux, and that context encompasses economic, religious, and literary preoccupations and conversations. The city’s healthy commercial exchanges facilitated an atmosphere of captivating intellectual and literary dialogue. The growth of the printing industry and the increase in the number of books available in print further supported existing means of publishing and circulating the works that were read, discussed, and written in this environment. While print did not immediately surpass the scribal and oral traditions, it certainly facilitated, fostered, and encouraged the culture of the book and the dissemination of knowledge. Books became more widely available, more easily accessible, and more quickly produced. Consequently, education expanded, literacy rates increased, and more people read more books. Readers increasingly began to compare, contrast, and conflate the world in which they lived with the worlds about which they read.39 Lyon in the mid-sixteenth century, while far from utopian, was at least more hospitable toward women’s educational, literary, and artistic accomplishments. A number of well-born Press, 2011), contests Febvre’s and Martin’s correlation between humanism and roman typography, judging it a “bibliographical myth (or hope) that the rise of printing could be associated with the rise of humanism” (58). In chapter 3, “The Voodoo Economics of Space,” Dane considers the case of noted humanist printer Nicholas Jenson, credited for creating an important roman type, but who also continued to produce books in gothic type. Dane justifies Jenson’s practice, maintaining that the typeface chosen for an imprint corresponds to that book’s genre: “what Jenson did was the more pedestrian act of printing a book in the visual genre of that book. Why would his buyers have wanted a text in roman type that they were used to reading in gothic?” (70). Despite this difference, both points of view underscore the interdependent relationship among printers’ and booksellers’ production and marketing strategies and the reading public’s tastes and expectations. 39. See Gray, Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture, 5.

14 Introduction and bourgeois Lyonnais women participated in the intellectual circles of the city, often under the tutelage of prominent male scholars and writers, such as Maurice Scève and Clément Marot,40 or at the prestigious Collège de la Trinité, the first coeducational institution in France. Indeed, as a recent collection of essays on women’s involvement in Renaissance Lyon’s literary world demonstrates, the unique social circumstances of this city made it possible for women to achieve authorship—that is writing, publishing, and engaging with their readers through their works—in ways that were not possible elsewhere.41 In Comptes amoureux, Jeanne Flore offers an insightful glimpse of the types of coteries in which contemporary women may have participated, taking up within her imagined community themes that engaged the larger literary world of Lyon.

Comptes amoureux: Content and Analysis Comptes amoureux is an eclectic collection of seven tales, loosely linked by the theme of love and framed by the brief commentary of their female storytellers. This group of women presumably gathered together during the fall grape harvest and passed the time telling tales of love. As the tales are written representations of an oral and aural experience, Jeanne Flore frequently punctuates the narrative with interjections that simulate that convivial atmosphere, drawing the audience’s attention to a particular detail with expressions such as: “Think, ladies-in-love,” or “and so it came to pass, my dear ladies-in-love.”42 To further recreate the spoken nature of the tales for the reader, each storyteller briefly introduces and concludes her tale, often announcing her intended moral, lamenting the central character’s misfortune, or 40. See Verdun-L. Saulnier, “L’Heure de Dolet,” in Maurice Scève (ca. 1500–1560) (Repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1981), 115–17. 41. See Michèle Clément and Janine Incardona, eds., L’Émergence littéraire des femmes à Lyon à la Renaissance 1520–1560 (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de SaintÉtienne, 2008). See especially Clément’s “Introduction,” 7–11. 42. On similar interjections in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, see Cathleen Bauschatz, “Inscribed Women Listeners and Readers in the Heptaméron,” in Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture, ed. John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 104–22.

Introduction 15 referring to the overarching objective of persuading Madame Cebille of the importance of reciprocal love, as she is the lone woman in the group to deny Cupid’s sovereignty and to reject love. The reader does not witness any real discussion or conversation of the tales among the women, only brief allusions to dialogue that allegedly took place.43 Jeanne Flore presents only two points of view in the frame narratives: a dichotomy between Madame Cebille, who is against love, and the other storytellers, who are for love. It is the desire to persuade Madame Cebille of the error in her judgment that motivates the storytelling and gives purpose to the gathering of women. Jeanne Flore describes this gathering and the fictional premise of the work in her introductory epistle to Madame Minerve. Jeanne Flore articulates in convenient microcosm, and a reasonably accurate one, how well-born women44 produced and consumed literature in Renaissance France, from the manner by which a book could be conceived and arrive on the marketplace to the literary dialogues that captivated the reading public.45 Women participated in oral recitations; they circulated texts in manuscript form; and they served as patrons of other aspiring writers by requesting works of their correspondents and commissioning works tailored to their personal interests and causes.46 The Preliminary Epistle: Imagining Communities of Letters The prefatory epistle is a literary commonplace in Renaissance Europe that provides authors a venue for dedicating their works to a patron 43. See, for example, the frame narratives preceding tales three and six. 44. Jeanne Flore specifies that her companions are of “good grace and learning” and that all are “of gentle birth.” 45. Similarly, Chang observes: “[…] the dedicatory epistle traces a path of textual production, from oral recitation (the women who racontent and Madame Minerve who listens to the stories) to writing, and to print (at which point Madame Minerve now becomes the recipient of the material book).” See Chang, Into Print, 41–42. 46. See Kirk D. Read, “Women of the French Renaissance in Search of Literary Community: A Prolegomenon to Early Modern Women’s Participation in Letters,” in Romance Languages Annual 5 (1993): 95–102. He states: “Women wrote. Women circulated manuscripts. Women argued in literary salons that they themselves organized and directed. Women learned, wrote and taught Latin. Women ran publishing houses upon the death of their spouses. Women published their own writing under their own names” (95).

16 Introduction or supporter and for signaling a target audience. In female-authored works, liminary pieces feature other women with near exclusivity, calling on their readers and dedicatees to identify with a certain aspect of the ensuing text.47 In other words, female-authored paratexts tend to favor the creation of a common place, a safe place.48 Some of these virtual communities reproduce or reshape real-life iterations while others are true utopias, rhetorical places that exist nowhere, yet inspire their contemplation. These imagined societies come into being in relation to the literary work. Authors craft fictional communities within the framework of their narrative (the gathering of storytellers in Comptes amoureux or in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron). Once offered to the public, a work creates another community, this one constructed of readers who adopt its message and practice its activities, whether individually or collectively, quietly or openly. Jeanne Flore describes such a scenario: My cousin, following the promise that I made to you the other day to give you a copy of some stories (these stories concern what happens to those who condemn and scorn true love), I took the quill in hand to write them out for you. You witnessed the telling of these very pertinent stories at the recent wine harvest. Our dear friends and relatives, Madame Melibée, Madame Cebille, Madame 47. Again, see Read, “In Search of Literary Community,” 96, where he observes: “What is immediately striking about women’s published writings in the French Renaissance is the continual address to other women within the dedicatory and prefatory locus of their works. Almost without exception their collections begin with epistles dedicated ‘aux dames,’ ‘aux lectrices,’ ‘à toutes vertueuses femmes,’ or with letters which hailed certain patronesses or female friends.” 48. Lorraine Code’s notion of rhetorical spaces is particularly helpful in studying imagined communities. In Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations, she defines these spaces as “fictive but not fanciful locations, whose (tacit, rarely spoken) territorial imperatives structure and limit the kinds of utterances that can be voiced within them with a reasonable expectation of uptake […] and an expectation of being heard, understood, taken seriously” (New York: Routledge, 1995), ix. Susan Broomhall, in Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 71–2, suggests the usefulness of Code’s terminology in describing the theoretical context shaping women’s publications.

Introduction 17 Hortence, Madame Lucienne, Madame Salphionne, Madame Sapho, Madame Andromeda, and Madame Meduse were present at this event, as well as a few other acquaintances of good grace and learning. Indeed, I dare say that all of these women are of gentle birth. As I was writing I suddenly thought to myself that it would be a most agreeable and pleasant thing for young ladies-inlove (especially for those young ladies who persist loyally in their devotion to Cupid and who take great pleasure in reading such joyful stories) if I were to have those stories printed at once. And I did just that, hoping nevertheless that my readers would excuse my unpolished and poorly composed writing. This is the work of a woman, after all, and one cannot expect it to be as finely executed as that of a man of greater skill. Thus, do with these stories what you will. And I bid you Godspeed, my dear cousin, to whom I pray for the fulfillment of all your heart’s desires. (63) In her opening epistle, Jeanne Flore addresses Madame Minerve, mimicking the relationship between an author and her real-life patron. She indicates that by recording the ensuing tales, she is fulfilling a promise to her addressee to provide a written recording of stories that had been recited and discussed aloud. But Jeanne Flore sees usefulness in her collection that extends beyond this bilateral relationship, and as the letter progresses, its audience broadens. This epistle, and indeed the entire project of Comptes amoureux, hinges on cultivating women’s literacy, and here, literacy—the acquisition of a particular skill through training and practice—applies both to the writing and reading that shape narratives and to their thematic content: love. By evoking the names of the women who had participated in the recent gathering at which those stories were told, she acknowledges their participation in this female community and announces their potential to contribute to a larger community of letters.49 49. Read, “In Search of Literary Community,” 96, maintains “that women carefully wove their texts not only to protect or promote their works, but to project a sense of community as well which was equally important to their literary livelihood,” and he highlights texts in which “literary women, while demurring to concerns regarding their publication,

18 Introduction Within the protected environment of their storytelling circle, a room of their own so to speak, these women practice and hone their skills, preparing them for future performance in larger communities. Thus, as Jeanne Flore redacts her manuscript, she implicitly theorizes the book’s reception by explicitly offering additional women membership to the privileged community. First, she draws in a specific group of young ladies (those who demonstrate a particularly loyal devotion to Cupid) and second, she includes all ladies-in-love, without specifying any further criteria other than an appreciation for tales of love. Having this collection printed will allow the author to reach this wider audience, by making it possible to reproduce the tales more quickly, in larger volume, with fewer errors or alterations than either the manuscript or oral traditions would allow. Printing the tales protects the value of their currency and facilitates their circulation in the public sphere. In her preliminary pieces, Jeanne Flore explicitly defines both communities, that occurring within the fictional construct and that resulting from the book’s reception once a community of readers has been established. Both imagined communities propose a decidedly gendered, privileged, and seemingly impossible existence, the former, fictional community functioning as a model for the latter, potential real-life community. In other words, the coterie of women who recite and discuss the tales that would become Comptes amoureux serves as a mise en abyme of women’s literacy. However, the books women wanted to read, the books they were encouraged to read, and the books women were able to print were not necessarily of the same genres. Here, Jeanne Flore blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. Women’s reading material had long included practical, utilitarian books, such as instructional volumes on cookery, needlework, and appearance, devotional works intended to cultivate piety and compendia of exemplary women—mostly virtuous ones—designed

manoeuvered as well to present themselves and their works as appealing and belonging to a specific female community.” Read identifies three potential communities: regional (e.g., women from Lyon), familial (e.g., between mother and daughter) and religious (e.g., women living within convents).

Introduction 19 to impart essential moral values to their readers.50 Humanist scholars, such as Erasmus and Vivès, were printing an increasing amount of didactic literature, in which they emphasize women’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral capacities. Humanist scholars also dedicated many of their works to prominent women patrons and admirers: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Roper in Great Britain, Marguerite de Navarre, among others in France. Female-oriented titles, themes, and liminary pieces such as dedications and epistles indicate an increasingly important market for women readers and books that consider the female experience. Boccaccio, for example, dedicates his Decameron to “charming ladies,” specifically women who “conceal the flames of passion within their fragile breasts,” but who, in the current social situation, “are forced to follow the whims, fancies, and dictates of their fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, so that they spend most of their time cooped up within the narrow confines of their rooms.” Through his tales, the author purportedly aims “to provide succor and diversion for the ladies.”51 Although Boccaccio and Jeanne Flore both prescribe— and inscribe—a female audience for their fictional works, women’s conduct books acerbically proscribe love stories and chivalric tales, confirming a strong penchant for pleasure reading of the type that the Decameron and Comptes amoureux offer.52 However, we now know that this type of literature constituted a significant portion of noble

50. Even practical, utilitarian books incorporated moral and spiritual lessons. See, for example, André Le Fournier, “La decoration and honnestete de laquelle nous parlerons cy apres, ne se prent point a decorer la teste seullement, mais aussi toute la personne,” A2r, in La decoration d’humaine nature, & aornement des dames (Lyon: Françoys Juste, 1537). A copy of this work is available in the University of Virginia Special Collections Library (Gordon 1537 .L45) and has been digitized through the project “The Renaissance in Print: SixteenthCentury Books in the Douglas Gordon Collection,” http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/ uva-lib:745506/view?x=812&y=1713.5&z=0&lock=false&page=uva-lib:774275. 51. See Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 2nd ed., trans. and ed. G. H. McWilliam (New York: Penguin, 1995), 1–3. 52. Similarly, in a study of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, Bauschatz demonstrates that the repeated occurrence of the demonstrative phrase “voylà, Mesdames” (from this you may surmise, my ladies) that a female audience is anticipated. See her “Inscribed Women Listeners,” 104–22.

20 Introduction and bourgeois women’s book collections.53 Vivès, in The Education of a Christian Woman, condemns the consumption of fanciful books in the vernacular, ones that “treat no subjects but love and war.” He deems this literature a veritable pestilence, insisting: “a woman who contemplates these things drinks poison into her breast.”54 Jeanne Flore writes what women read at the time. But an overwhelming majority of books printed specifically for and accessible to women was still written by men. Women could not yet print as freely as their male counterparts, nor could they scribally publish at will without anxiety or consequence.55 The private and informal environments of literary coteries and manuscript circulation may have offered a modicum of protection and freedom for women’s literary production and consumption, particularly those socially and/or geographically removed from the constraints of court.56 Nonetheless, women’s speech—both verbal and in print or manuscript—was fraught with difficulty and often met resistance in reflecting the bimodal nature of their reading patterns.57 In theory, within this literary world it was 53. Susan Broomhall describes patterns of women’s literacy in her Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 28–32. She confirms that popular works such as Le Chasteau d’amours and Doctrinal de sapience were commonly found in the libraries of noble women (42). Louis B. Wright also offers a panorama of women’s reading habits, including chivalric romance, in “The Reading Renaissance English Woman,” Studies in Philology 28 (1931): 139–56. Ruth Kelso’s Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance provides an overview of didactic literature teaching chastity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 41–44. 54. See Juan Luis Vivès, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 73–74. 55. See also note 5, page 2. 56. See Anne Larsen, “Un honneste passetems: Strategies of Legitimation in French Renaissance Women’s Prefaces,” Esprit Créateur 30, no. 4 (1990): 11–22. See also Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade, 132–35. 57. Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade, 26, uses the adjective “bimodal” to describe the two manners by which women accessed texts: by sharing orally in a group setting and by reading silently alone. She elaborates: “Instructional texts were also written for women and children on correct manners, housekeeping, and conduct during widowhood. Bimodal, these books could be read aloud at segregated gatherings, such as in sewing circles, or studied privately.” I extend the adjective to apply to two vast categories of women’s reading: instructional, “self-help” books (e.g., didactic literature) and pleasure reading (e.g., love stories and chivalric romances).

Introduction 21 unquestionably unusual and daring for a woman to print love stories and chivalric romances. To write is to express one’s voice. To publish one’s writing is to confirm the validity of that voice within a public arena, and the “other” voice certainly did not enjoy the same widespread validation as did the voice of the well-born and well-educated man. Restrained silence was equated with chastity and piety, and public speech with indecency and lewdness.58 In practice, within this literary world women likely wrote and published much more than we realize. Indeed, the quantity of books in print openly attributed to female authors was meager in comparison to their male counterparts. And female authors who scribally published often crafted strategic postures in order to deny or to undermine their creative voice.59 However, the quantity of unattributed female-authored works, particularly poetry, such as those included in collections and in miscellanies—both in print and in manuscript—is difficult, if not impossible, to determine accurately.60 While the activities of Jeanne Flore’s imagined society of women are certainly plausible—telling stories, recording stories, sharing their manuscripts in their correspondence—in light of what we now know about women’s writing in sixteenth-century France, the cavalier manner by which the author claims to have printed her collection is rather unlikely. Jeanne Flore suddenly thought about printing her stories and proceeded to do so. With the exception of Christine de Pizan, considered Europe’s first professional woman writer, the great majority of secular or non-instructive literature by women was either published posthumously, as in the case of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron or Pernette du Guillet’s Rymes, or was published pseudonymously either by men posing as women, or by noblewomen protecting their 58. See Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade, 72–73. 59. See Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade, chapter 3, “Women Publishing: Theoretical and Practical Contexts,” 71–91. Of particular interest are Broomhall’s discussions of Gabrielle de Bourbon and Anne de Graville, both of whom published in manuscript. 60. Not only does the absence of authorial attribution in miscellanies render the task of quantifying the frequency of women’s writing difficult, many personal miscellanies—scribal copies of works gathered into collections and imprints bound together by their owners—were broken for the interest of managing libraries. On the importance of personal miscellanies to the reading public and the breaking of volumes bound together, see McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 47–52.

22 Introduction identity, as some believe to be the case with Hélisenne de Crenne.61 In sixteenth-century France, “gender mattered to women writing.”62 Apart from a brief, nearly parenthetical apology for her poor composition, Jeanne Flore’s epistle gives no impression of hesitation, of shame, or of expected criticism. The author unabashedly submits the ensuing work to the reading public and appears fearless of public opinion. Furthermore, the dedicatee of this epistle, Madame Minerve, bears a conspicuous and heavily charged name. Her name and her role within the fictional community, I argue, encourage the reader to consider a progressive proposition: that women become their own advocates, agents of change who, through their participation in the book trade and literary life through tales such as these, refashion the notion of a relationship that is fundamental to the health of their community. That relationship is marriage. But, before tackling marriage, the storytellers first tackle love, and the manner in which they illustrate love changes drastically between the two editions of Jeanne Flore’s collection of tales. Madame Minerve’s Introductory Poem Immediately preceding the epistle, Jeanne Flore’s dedicatee, Madame Minerve, offers a poem, targeting as her audience a specific group of women readers: noble ladies-in-love. The poem’s ostensible author was herself a member of that temporary community of women writers-intraining, and Jeanne Flore twice places her in a prominent position in the preliminary pieces of Comptes amoureux—first as poet and then as dedicatee, the first designated reader of the work. In so doing, Jeanne Flore carefully crafts the position of this storyteller as one of authority. The name Minerve, or Minerva, was a particularly charged designation in Renaissance France due to the omnipresence of Greco-Roman

61. For an enumerative bibliography of female-authored works printed in France in the first half of the sixteenth century, see William Kemp, “Textes composés ou traduits par des femmes et imprimés en France avant 1550: Bibliographie des imprimés féminins (1488– 1549),” Littératures 18 (1998): 151–220. 62. Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade, 91.

Introduction 23 mythology in artistic and literary culture.63 Daughter of the supreme Roman deity, Jupiter, Minerva was the patron goddess of wisdom, invention, and warfare. She also held a conspicuous position in the print culture of Renaissance Lyon as goddess of printing, and it was under her aegis that workers in Lyon’s printing industry carried out their holiday festivities. These celebrations consisted of street processions, public indulgence in food and drink, and mock humiliation rituals during which misrule reigned and accepted social structure was temporarily turned on its head. Noted historian of the French Renaissance Natalie Zemon Davis underscores the importance of public festivities in the literary life of Lyon. For these celebrations, elaborate and learned pamphlets were printed and distributed to the crowds. Some pamphlets aimed to advance the status of printing as an art; others discussed politics or religion, and all of them were executed under the auspices of Minerva, the patron goddess of wisdom and printing, whose image was emblazoned on their covers.64 To inscribe the figure of Minerva-Minerve into Comptes amoureux as patron, poet, and participant is to set this work apart consciously from other means of publication. It is to celebrate the work’s status as an imprint, a mechanically produced book. It is to underscore the importance of this new technology and to signal a transition toward a literary culture supported by printed books. But to inscribe the female figure of Minerva-Minerve into Comptes amoureux is also to give the work an aura of ambiguity. The presence of the goddess of wisdom, invention, and warfare at once inspires confidence, encourages composition, and implicitly promotes an audacious, quasi-militant posture. But as patron goddess of printing, Minerva also presides over the jovial, topsy-turvy celebrations of misrule, a temporary atmosphere that allowed for controversial criticism of religion, politics, 63. On Greco-Roman mythology in Renaissance art, see Paul Barolsky, “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 2 (1998): 451–74. On mythological influences in literature, see Ann Moss, Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Jean Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara Sessions (New York: Harper, 1961). 64. See Natalie Zemon Davis, “Misprint and Minerva: Printers’ Journeymen in SixteenthCentury Lyon,” Printing History 3, no. 1 (1981): 17–23.

24 Introduction and society through destruction and renewal, blame and praise with no real consequence.65 In her poem, Madame Minerve challenges traditional roles of women and recommendations of chastity. Her stance effectively advocates the suspension of social convention; the fictional community from which Madame Minerve speaks indeed embraces an upside-down version of reality. Comptes amoureux is, in effect, a paradoxical work, for the women participating in its fictional community work against (para) the current orthodoxy (doxa). Paradox is a rhetorical tool by which writers reveal the flawed nature of a system, practice, or belief, and this particular rhetorical device became widespread in Lyon during the years surrounding Jeanne Flore’s publications under the influence of Ortensio Lando’s Paradossi, a collection of propositions that were decidedly opposed to received opinion.66 Paradoxical works of the time also owe a great debt to one of the most celebrated Renaissance humanists, Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose Praise of Folly (1511) offers an extended mock eulogy delivered by none other than Folly herself. Like Erasmus’s Folly, Comptes amoureux also is a self-referential, self-critical work. These are women criticizing how other women conduct themselves; women behave (or claim to behave) badly in this work, in direct opposition to accepted norms. There is tension and discontinuity between the reality of the social situation and the position that the storytellers adopt. While the women seek to suppress the dubious nature of their stance by attempting to convert the one dissident voice among their group, that unsettling doubt remains the elephant in the room. And the person who exem65. See also Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 97–123, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1968). 66. See Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 4. Michèle Clément attributes an anonymously published French translation of Lando’s Paradossi to Maurice Scève, Paradoxe contre les lettres (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1545), in which the author excoriates poetry, literacy, the printing press, and letter writing. See Michèle Clément, “La rhétorique paradoxale à Lyon,” in Lyon et l’Illustration de la langue française à la Renaissance, ed. Gérard Defaux and Bernard Colombat (Lyon: ENS, 2003), 451–61, and “Maurice Scève et le Paradoxe contre les lettres,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 65, no. 1 (2003): 97–124. The latter contains a critical edition of the translation. See also Trevor Peach’s edition of Charles Étienne’s French translation of Lando’s work, Paradoxes (Geneva: Droz, 1998).

Introduction 25 plifies that doubt—Madame Cebille—ultimately becomes the town fool, a contemporary version of Folly: she who does precisely what she says one should not do.67 She was of the opinion that love is nothing but folly. Alas, the poor thing had so offended the gods that they had hardened her heart in order to render her future punishment all the more shameful and cruel. When she finally abandoned all propriety (a quality that she had quite jealously defended) to a villainous and foul groom, her justifiably offended husband bound her naked to her lover and exposed her in the middle of the street for all to see. (247–49) The rhetorical function of paradox explains in part Madame Minerve’s outrageous proposal in her preliminary poem to ladiesin-love, but the storyteller also converses with a literary predecessor, Maurice Scève’s 1535 prose translation, La Déplorable fin de Flamète.68 He, too, offers a prefatory poem to the reader. Madame Minerve attempts to persuade the reader to question Scève’s previously submitted opinion, a stance that is decidedly against love. One means of effectively creating a literary game or debate is by engaging in parody, which in its etymological sense is a second singing, a recreation of a prior work in a manner that may either oppose and correct or complement and complete the inspiration text.69 Madame Minerve’s verse

67. On paradox, see also Annette Tomarken, The Smile of Truth: The French Satirical Eulogy and Its Antecedents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 68. Although this work has never been critically edited in English or in French, a transcription is available in Œuvres complètes, ed. Pascal Quignard (Paris: Mercure de France, 1974), 425–509. Juan de Flores presents his Spanish work Grimalte y Gradissa as a continuation of Boccaccio’s novella Elegia di donna Fiammetta. Boccaccio’s work also was translated into French and was printed in multiple editions in Paris and Lyon as La Complainte très piteuse de Flamette à son amy Pamphile. 69. The definition is Floyd Gray’s, which he explains in Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture, 165–66.

26 Introduction directly recalls, rewrites, and reinvents Maurice Scève’s earlier poem.70 She writes: MADAME EGINE MINERVE to Noble Ladies-in-Love That you do not offend True Love, beware, For he is not, as he’s depicted, blind; Instead, he so afflicts those most unkind Whose cold and impure hearts lack tender care. See him already, with his bow, prepare To draw it on the loveless ones and use His evil cruelly. So then, please choose To listen, in Love’s name, with hallowed air. [MADAME EGINE MINERVE aux nobles Dames amoureuses. Gardez vous bien du Vray amour offendre, Lequel n’est pas comme on le painct, aveugle: Sinon en tant que les Cruelz aveugle, Qui n’ont le cueur entier, piteux, et tendre, Le voila ja tout prest de son arc tendre Contre qui n’ayme usant du malefice De Cruaulté: Doncques au sainct service D’amour vueillez de bon vouloir entendre.] How wise are they who picture Cupid blind: An infant archer, flighty, small, and pale, Blinding victims with his arrows designed To raise their puerile fears and make them quail At merest glance—all moody, fitful, frail, Eclipsing fickle Pamphile in the wild. See how unwise, O you who read this tale, Is he who’s lost his wits, by love beguiled. TO OFFER ONESELF IS TO SUFFER 70. On the apparent relationship between Scève’s Flamète and Jeanne Flore’s work, see Régine Reynolds-Cornell, “Madame Jeanne Flore and the Contes amoureux: A Pseudonym and a Paradox,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 51, no. 1 (1989): 123–33.

Introduction 27 [Huictain Bien paindre sceut qui feit amour aveugle, Enfant, archier, pasle, maigre, volaige, Car en tirant ses amans il aveugle, Et plus que enfans les faict moulz de couraige, Pasles par cure, et maigres par grand raige, Plus inconstant que Pamphile au desert, Donc, o lecteur, celluy n’est pas bien saige Qui pour aimer est de son sens desert. SOUFFRIR SE OUFFRIR]71 The two poems are quite similar in structure; both are decasyllabic huitains following a predominantly feminine rhyme scheme. Both treat the commonplace topic of love, and both draw on a common lexicon and bank of images in their depiction of a blind and sighted Cupid. However, Madame Minerve’s adaptation modifies Scève’s poem to a new purpose; she parodies her predecessor. Madame Minerve’s offer readjusts and undermines the original, reframing the notion of love and suggesting an alternative reading of Cupid’s aspect and actions. In tandem, these two poems expediently reproduce a long and complicated literary tradition of related, yet conflicting notions of love and Cupid: Eros and Anteros, blind and sighted Cupid. From the Eros tradition develops a mythographic explanation for a morally corrupt, sensual impulse that was ubiquitous in medieval literature. From the Anteros tradition comes a metaphysically based, sublime adoration often found in lyric poetry. The influence of Christianity on literature and art further complicates these opposed concepts of love. The New Testament notion of agape, also known as caritas, a benevolent, spiritual giving of the self representing God’s selfless love for his creation, 71. See Maurice Scève, “La Déplorable fin de Flamète,” Œuvres complètes, ed. Pascal Quignard (Paris: Mercure de France, 1974) 426. For the original, sixteenth-century edition, see Maurice Scève, La Deplourable fin de Flamete, elegante invention de Jehan de Flores espaignol, traduicte en langue françoyse (Lyon: Françoys Juste, 1535), fo.1v. A copy of this edition is available at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (Rés. 813768). insert sentence at end of note. See also the appendix.

28 Introduction complements Plato’s description of Anteros as a reciprocating passion that springs forth when the loved object returns the love of the loving subject. In sixteenth-century French literature, writers tend to evoke the image of a blind Cupid using the term folle amour (irrational, or mad love) in order to represent a base, physical, profane type of love. In contrast, neo-Platonists and Christian humanists, particularly those associated with the circle of Marguerite de Navarre—Clément Marot and Antoine Héroët, for example—tend to rely on the terms ferme amour, vraye amour, or amitié (true or perfect love) in order to discuss spiritual, unsullied, sacred love, a love founded on mutual respect and inherited from Erasmus’s notion of conjugal love.72 While both poems imagine Cupid’s targeted victims as being blinded by his arrows, they differ in the type of cautionary advice they offer to the reader. Scève’s poem is an admonishment against irrational love (folle amour), for it is those in love who suffer from Cupid’s arrows. His Cupid is both blind and the one who vengefully blinds others, rendering lovers emotionally and physically incapacitated. Scève dwells on the woeful effects of love by employing the same vocabulary for describing both lovers and Cupid, and his device, SOUFFRIR SE OUFFRIR (to offer oneself is to suffer), doubles the precarious nature of the lover’s state, implying that the very act of loving another leads to suffering. Scève places his reader on guard against love, and in his own introductory epistle he advises prudence, urging those intent on experiencing love to do so warily, and advising those already in love to 72. On love in Christian humanist circles, see Robert Cottrell, “Le Déplacement d’Éros par Anteros dans L’Amye de court de La Borderie,” in Anteros: Actes du colloque de Madison (Wisconsin) mars 1994, ed. Ulrich Langer and Jan Miernowski (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994), 117–35, and The Grammar of Silence: A Reading of Marguerite de Navarre’s Poetry (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986). On the tradition of blind Cupid in literature and art, see Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). Andrea Alciato also illustrates the opposition between Eros and Anteros in his renowned book of emblems, Emblemata, which was printed in French translation in 1536. See the emblem “Anteros. Amor virtutis, alium Cupidinem superans. / Amour de vertus surmonte Cupido” in Andreas Alciatus, Emblems in Translation: The French, German, and Spanish Emblems: Facsimiles and Translations, ed. Peter M. Daly (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), emblem 111. For a sixteenth-century edition, see Livret des emblemes (Paris: Chrestien Wechel, 1536), SM23B. This book has been digitized by the French Emblems at Glasgow Project and is available online: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/books.php?id=FALa.

Introduction 29 delicately break that liaison. In the ensuing narrative, Flamète seconds this counsel, declaring that ladies-in-love should do their best to spare themselves her agony and discontent, and avoiding love is the only way to achieve this.73 Jeanne Flore, however, favors both the triumph of Anteros over his lesser counterpart and the mutual demonstration of love. Madame Minerve’s poem also depicts Cupid’s victims as cruel and pitiless. But here, it is not being in love, but to refuse love, that elicits Cupid’s vengeance. Cupid is not blind. Rather, vision is the seat of his power, enabling him to distinguish between good and bad. The poet nullifies Scève’s negative image, and from that double negative results a positive. Blame is transformed into praise. Invective becomes encomium; a vindictive, childlike tyrant metamorphoses into a proponent of mutual love, compassionate toward those who follow his lead, yet ready to avenge himself against those who fail to surrender to his influence. Madame Minerve reproves those whose hearts are cold and impure and urges the reader to listen attentively to the ensuing tales, underscoring this activity as a veritable devotion to Cupid. She writes of love as experienced by the heart and by the body. Throughout Comptes amoureux, the storytellers speak openly of sensual love and allude to their firsthand experience in all aspects of love, a stance that ordinarily would be socially condemning at the time.74 73. A transcription and English translation of Scève’s epistle to the reader are available in the appendix. Similarly, in Les Angoysses douleureuses qui procedent d’amours, Dame Hélisenne addresses an opening epistle to “honest women,” in which she moralizes in a similar way. See Hélisenne de Crenne, Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours, ed. Christine de Buzon (Paris: Champion, 1997), 95–7. Two of Jeanne Flore’s printers, Denys de Harsy and Denis Janot, also printed editions of Les Angoysses douleureuses. 74. There is no question that there existed two types of sexual behavior in the eyes of the religious and civic authorities, one admissible and one condemnable. Sarah Matthews Grieco, “Corps, Apparence et Sexualité,” in XVIe–XVIIe siècles, vol. 3 of Histoire des femmes en Occident, ed. Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, Natalie Zemon Davis, Arlette Farge (Paris: Plon, 1991), 89–91, discusses these two types of behavior: “l’un [est] admissible, l’autre coupable. Le premier, conjugal, ne vise que la procreation ou le soulagement d’éventuels besoins physiques. Le second, gouverné par la passion amoureuse et le plaisir sensuel.” She also notes: “dès le XVIe siècle, […] l’Église catholique commence une lutte systématique contres toutes les formes de relations sexuelles prénuptiales.”

30 Introduction The marked difference between Jeanne Flore’s and Maurice Scève’s depiction of love is in some measure attributable to parody and paradox, but also demonstrates the influence of contemporary love philosophy. In Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore,75 spiritual and carnal love are not mutually exclusive, but physical love may, in fact, serve as a bodily manifestation of reciprocal love, a literal coming together of bodies that signifies the figurative union of souls. The imperfect condition of the physical body necessitates love’s imperfect expression. Marguerite de Navarre acknowledges the place of carnal union in the development of vray amour (true love) in her poetry, notably the third poem in her Distinction du Vray Amour par dixains:76 This greater Love, seeing the lesser one bare, Defenseless—worse than if caught in death’s snare— With nothing but his name deserving praise, Grasped him in his arms and held him there Until the lesser grew great beyond compare Uniting with honest Love—unfeigned always. 75. The Dialoghi was first printed in Italian in 1535. Although it would not be translated into French until fifteen years later (Pontus de Tyard, Dialogues d’amour, Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1551), the work nonetheless had a significant influence on elite literary circles. See Dialogues d’amour: The French Translation Attributed to Pontus de Tyard and Published in Lyon, 1551, by Jean de Tournes, ed. T. Anthony Perry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974). A copy of the 1551 edition of this work is avilable in the University of Virginia Small Special Collections Library (Gordon 1551 .L45). Ebreo explains how imperfect conditions require love’s imperfect expression: “bien t’ay je dit que cest acte ne dissout l’Amour parfait, ains plustot le lie et estraint par les actes corporelz amoureux, qui sont autant desirez des amants, qu’ilz servent respectivement de l’un à l’autre de signal et indice de reciproque Amour. Encor pource que les courages sont unis en Amour spirituelle, les corps desirent aussi de jouir à leur possibilité de quelque union à fin qu’ilz demeurent sans diversité, et l’union soit du tout parfaite: principalement pource que par la correspondence de la corporelle union l’Amour spirituel s’augmente et se fait plus parfaite, quand les oeuvres deüs s’en ensuyvent. Donq en conclusion, je te dis que […] la vraye et propre diffinition du parfait Amour de l’homme envers la femme n’est autre qu’une conversion de l’amant en l’aymée, avec desir que l’aymée soit convertie en l’amant. Et quand tel Amour est egal en chacune des deux parties, il est difiini une conversion de l’une en l’autre personne aymante” (69). 76. This series of dizains is found in Abel Lefranc’s edition, Les Dernières poésies de Marguerite de Navarre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1896), 301–12. This volume is freely available as a Google ebook.

Introduction 31 Surrounding and enclosed, in splendor’s gaze, Pure Love, within, clothes its own increase; And every harm, good conquers and dismays: Thus, out of Love, Love crafts his masterpiece. [Ce grant Amour voiant le petit nud Tout desarmé et pis que mort tenu, Ne voiant plus en luy que son nom sainct, Entre ses bras si fort l’a retenu, Que le petit très grant est devenu Par l’union du vray Amour non fainct, Dont la grandeur l’environne et enceint. La charité en soy se cache et couvre, Et la bonté rend tout son mal estaint: Ainsy l’Amour d’Amour faict son chef d’œuvre.]77 Marguerite imagines love beginning with Eros, the younger, immature version of love. Through physical discovery, the couple grows together, their love growing simultaneously. Though initially imperfect in its bodily, shallow manifestation, physical love gradually matures into the perfect example of Anteros. In Leone Ebreo’s philosophy of love, physical communication through sight, touch, or words is a first step toward cultivating true love, and as the lovers lose themselves in one another, physical boundaries—the material body separating one from another—gradually dissolve, blurring the distinction between individuals.78 In addition to their views of love, the fictional motivation of the narratives in Scève’s Flamète and Flore’s Comptes amoureux is markedly different. In the former work, there are two parallel narratives, each concerning the relationship difficulties that a pair of lovers encounters: Grimalte and Gradisse, and Pamphile and Flamète. Having recently received a missive from Flamète cautioning her against the perils of love, Gradisse requests that Grimalte leave her in search of 77. Distinction du vray amour in Les Dernières poésies, 302. 78. Marian Rothstein offers a helpful discussion of Leone Ebreo’s influence in French literature. See her Reading in the Renaissance: Amadis de Gaule and the Lessons of Memory (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 55.

32 Introduction Flamète, asking that he chronicle her trials in order to prove his fidelity and to reassure her that he will not betray her as Pamphile did Flamète. The story of Grimalte and Gradisse functions similarly to a frame narrative in the style of Comptes amoureux or the Decameron. It is Grimalte who recounts tales of Flamète and comments on her misfortunes. But in this case, the frame narrative spills over into the central tale, for as Grimalte meets Flamète and Pamphile, he interacts with the characters about whom he writes and he, too, becomes a part of the narrative that he is recording in manuscript. The diegetic levels merge as the chronicler becomes personally involved in the narrative of his subject, ultimately sharing a similar fate. Due to Grimalte’s intervention into the narrative, Scève’s translation both opens and closes on a male-centric note, despite the announcement made in the work’s title—this is to be the story of Flamète’s tragic end (la déplorable fin de Flamète). In Scève’s introductory poem, the poet emphasizes the plight of Flamète’s lover, Pamphile, rather than his tragic, female heroine, and the book comes full circle to its point of entry by closing with Grimalte lamenting his own tragic fate. Joining Pamphile in exile, he enters into a self-imposed purgatory aimed at convincing Gradisse of his sincerity. Scève’s first and last impressions on his reader are ones centered in male experience. Flamète’s narrative is displaced, and her tale of woe becomes as diminutive as her name suggests, while the flames of Grimalte’s purgatory take center stage. Jeanne Flore, however, presents a diametrically different narrative situation. One might consider this a feminized second singing or correction of Juan de Flores’s work. As often happened during the temporary, festive celebrations of misrule, Jeanne Flore places women on top; she gives women agency.79 Her tales are all told by women, in the company of women,80 and the tales are motivated by the desire to instruct another woman, Madame Cebille (and other women like 79. I borrow the expression from Davis’s chapter “Women on Top,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 124–51. 80. A group of men joins the party only fleetingly and at the will of the women. Indeed, when six Lyonnais men arrive on the day of the sixth tale, Madame Salphionne quite vigorously insists that they stay and share in the merriment, and on their first attempt to leave, Madame Cassandre insists that they remain, calling on her female companions to join in the fight to detain them.

Introduction 33 her who may read the tales in print), how to correct her behavior. The storytellers unite against Madame Cebille’s insularity and refusal to engage in reciprocal love. Unlike Gradisse, who suspects men of philandering and inconstancy, Jeanne Flore’s women do not blame others for their current station. Rather, they blame the current social situation and work against the orthodoxy. Madame Briolayne Fusque, a storyteller who makes an appearance and speaks only in the second edition of the work, specifies exactly which social institution she blames in a poem addressed to the reader, and this poem concludes Comptes amoureux. The final impression left on the reader is a strong, heavily charged social commentary: “Mismatched marriage is what I’m blaming here,” Madame Fusque firmly asserts.

Mismatched Marriage in Renaissance Literature At the time, love did not necessarily have a place within marriage. Based on social advancement or economic interests, parents often chose grooms for their young brides that set them up for a very unhappy married life. Christian humanists, a term we now use to speak of an unofficial group of intellectuals who sought to reform the Catholic Church without fully breaking from it,81 were beginning to call attention to the Other Voice of this situation: that of la mal mariée, or the unhappily married bride. Soon after Jeanne Flore’s Comptes amoureux, François Rabelais would publish his Tiers Livre (1546), the third book in his Pantagruelian chronicle, treating at length the issue of marriage. Panurge, the comic foil to the humanist hero Pantagruel, wishes to marry, but fears the institution, having heard appalling tales of cuckoldry, abuse, and mismanaged money, all comic exaggerations of the Old Voice’s misconception of women. Panurge consults a panoply of 81. I borrow the term for these evangelical thinkers from Charles Nauert, “Marguerite, Lefèvre d’Étaples and the Growth of Christian Humanism in France,” in Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, ed. Colette H. Winn (New York: Modern Languages Association, 2007), 38–43. Nauert explains: “Christian humanists were humanists who explicitly linked their study of ancient classical and Christian writings with a determination to bring about a spiritual renewal and an institutional reform of Christendom. That connection between scholarly effort and a desire for spiritual renewal is the specific characteristic that distinguishes Christian humanists from other humanists who just happened to be religious” (39).

34 Introduction advisors, ranging from theologians to court jesters. With approaches as diverse as their professions, each attempts to teach Panurge the lesson that it is he who will determine his happiness in marriage, by wisely choosing a life companion. Despite the social reality of the early sixteenth century, to critique the institution of marriage was not without risk. Marriage was rigidly anchored in social and legal tradition. And marriage also was a sacrament of the Catholic Church, an institution staunchly resolute in protecting its own traditions. Both Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, though they did not always see eye to eye, called into question current theological and social practices relating to marriage and celibacy. Among other writers who promoted the reevaluation of marriage and scrutinized the nature of this sacrament in their works are clerics and advocates of church reform whom we recognize retrospectively as Christian humanists.82 A number of these intellectual and cultural stars of early- and mid-sixteenth-century France, such as François Rabelais, Clément Marot, and Bertrand de la Borderie, are known or suspected to have frequented the court of Marguerite de Navarre, one of the most influential of Christian humanist circles.83 Although the Christian humanist movement was neither official nor homogeneous, its leading representatives—most notably Erasmus—encouraged biblical scholarship and valued a philological approach to biblical literature in order to reconstruct the earliest, most unadulterated form of scripture. Christian humanists criticized corrupt practices of the Roman Catholic Church and advocated reforms that would reinstate the spirit and practices of the church as shown in the New Testament. Erasmus’s influence was widespread in Europe. Having studied theology in Paris, Erasmus’s first published work was printed there. As his renown spread across the continent and in England for his biblical translations and commentaries and for his condemnation of corrupt practices in the church, his works were printed extensively and by numerous printers, including in 82. On early church reform in France, see Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 83. Danielle Trudeau, in the introduction to her critical edition of L’Amie de court (1542), suggests that Marguerite de Navarre’s Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan, performed in 1547, borrows heavily from L’Amie de court (1542) (Paris: Champion, 1997), xv.

Introduction 35 Lyon. Along with Erasmus, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples was arguably the most influential pioneer for biblical scholarship and church reform in France.84 Near the end of his life, Lefèvre settled at Meaux and devoted himself to biblical translation in the French vernacular and laid the foundations for a peaceful, evangelical reform in that parish, guiding the teachings of young preachers serving the bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet. Lefèvre’s ideas were preserved and advanced in Briçonnet’s correspondence with Marguerite de Navarre, as the bishop of Meaux served as her spiritual advisor.85 While Lefèvre advocated peaceful reform within the church, his thinking was nonetheless controversial, and he depended on the protection of both François Ier and Marguerite de Navarre, spending his last years at their courts at Blois and Nérac.86 While Comptes amoureux may appear on the surface to be secular, it is important to remember that it also is the product of a society that was very much concerned with, and influenced by, religious reform. The literary world of Lyon was at the center of religious dissidence, a hotbed of Christian humanist publications and the center of a soon-to-erupt literary debate on the roles of love and marriage in a woman’s life, the querelle des Amyes. “Now I believe that the main root or principal wellspring that produces the greatest joy or unhappiness among humans is marriage,” writes Erasmus two decades prior to the printing of Jeanne Flore’s tales. He continues: “If appropriate care were taken in entering upon marriage, in cherishing it, and in seeing it through to the end, things would clearly go a lot better in human affairs than they do.”87 Erasmus published several works in which he decries the devolution 84. On the development of Christian humanism in France, see Charles Nauert, “Marguerite, Lefèvre d’Étaples and the Growth of Christian Humanism in France.” 85. See Nauert, “Christian Humanism,” 42–43. 86. On Lefèvre d’Étaples, see Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Lefèvre: Pioneer of Ecclesiastical Renewal in France (Grand Rapids: W. E. Eerdmans, 1984). Both Erasmus and Lefèvre died in 1536, just four years before La Pugnition was published. On Erasmian works printed in Lyon, see Cynthia Skenazi, Maurice Scève et la pensée chrétienne (Geneva: Droz, 1992), 10–11. 87. Desiderius Erasmus, “The Institution of Christian Matrimony,” trans. and ed. Michael J. Heath in The Collected Works of Erasmus, Spiritualia and Pastoralia, ed. John W. O’Malley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 69:203–438.

36 Introduction of marriage: the rhetorical piece Encomium matrimonii/In Praise of Marriage (1518), fictional dialogues in his Colloquies (1523–1529) and the panegyric Institutio christiani matrimonii /The Institution of Christian Matrimony (1526). In this last work, his most painstakingly thorough discussion of marriage, Erasmus examines the relationship between husband and wife from a variety of angles, from choosing a spouse to establishing an efficient and fulfilling domestic life and raising children, thereby creating a new generation that is well-prepared to carry on this Christian institution in a manner that is healthier in all respects—spiritually, emotionally, and physically.88 In his compassionate reconsideration of Christian matrimony, Erasmus urges those entering into the institution to do so in a manner that honors its theological basis. As Michael Heath reiterates in the introduction to his translation of the Institutio, Erasmus is trying “to raise the status of marriage in the eyes of his fellow Christians, to persuade them that the union of souls, rather than the contract, is the essence of marriage.”89 While such a program may have caught the attention of those sympathetic to church reform, it also caught the attention of those charged with preserving tradition. But in that case, rather than inspiring and emboldening its reader, the work appalled and provoked. Scholastic theologians concerned with protecting the orthodoxy considered such statements heretical and directed virulent attacks against their authors and followers. The cost of becoming the target of such vitriolic censure was significant, even life-ending. The Sorbonne (the Parisian institution charged with theological superintendence, education, and reprimand) twice imprisoned, for example, the prominent French author and proponent of church reform, the Chevalier Louis de Berquin, whom King François Ier in turn twice delivered from near certain peril. Although Berquin conceded to abjure his “Luthérien” heresies on these occasions, his perceived recidivism, which included French translations of several of Erasmus’s works, among them Encomium matrimonii (Déclamation des louenges 88. See Heath’s introductory note to his translation, “Institution of Christian Matrimony,” xxxxx. 89. Institutio, 212.

Introduction 37 de mariage), resulted in a death sentence. The Chevalier de Berquin was hanged and burned at the stake in 1529.90 By the 1540s, when Comptes amoureux entered the literary marketplace, Erasmus was inextricably associated with marriage reform, which in turn was associated with the larger movement toward church reform. And at that time, two authors with strong ties to Lyon, Barthélémy Aneau and Clément Marot, each translated several of Erasmus’s marriage colloquies into French.91 Aneau was a prominent figure in the intellectual life of Lyon from the 1530s until his death in 1561. As professor of rhetoric and then as principal of the prestigious Collège de la Trinité, he was at the foreground of cultural interests and discussions. Clément Marot, Christian humanist poet protected by Marguerite de Navarre, lived in Lyon after being made to abjure his unorthodox religious views before the city’s St. Jean cathedral. In Lyon he printed the definitive editions of his collected works, including L’Adolescence clémentine and La Suyte de l’Adolescence. Although Aneau and Marot experimented with a wide range of literary genres during their respective careers, that the question of love and marriage appears at this time in a work of two writers with strong ties to Lyon, and furthermore, that they chose to translate works by Erasmus—another scholar embroiled in the larger socio-religious controversy on marriage and more generally, women’s roles—strongly suggests that this theme was part of the zeitgeist of 1540s Lyon.92 Indeed, this upsurge of interest in reevaluating the roles of love in marriage and of marriage in Christian society is very clearly evident in the publication history of Jeanne Flore’s work. 90. See Le Chevalier de Berquin, Declamation des louenges de mariage [1525], ed. Emile V. Telle (Geneva: Droz, 1976). Telle offers an extensive biography and panorama of the historical context in his “introduction” (5–112). 91. See Aneau, Comédie ou dialogue matrimonial exemplaire de paix en mariage (Paris: Jehan Longis and Vincent Certenas, 1541). This book is available at the Bibliothèque National de France (Rés Yf-4354) and has been digitized, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k709346. See also Clément Marot, L’Abbé et la femme savante, La vierge mesprisant mariage, and La vierge repentie (ca. 1537–1542) in Œuvres poétiques complètes, ed. Gérard Defaux (Paris: Bordas, 1993–1996), 2:512–56. 92. Indeed, in his introductory note to Marot’s translations of the three marriage colloquies, Defaux briefly discusses the poet’s adherence to the marriage debate and finds it to be a consistent theme in Marot’s work from as early as 1528. See Œuvres poétiques, 2:1198–99.

38 Introduction

La Pugnition de l’amour contempné and the roman sentimental Between the two, distinct iterations of her collection, Jeanne Flore significantly alters the strategic aim and thematic focus of her book and of her storytellers’ tales. This reorientation is signaled by a change in the title of the collection, first published in 1540 by Lyon-based printer Françoys Juste as La Pugnition de l’amour contempné, extraict de l’amour fatal de madame Jane Flore. As the title announces, the tales included in this edition, which would become the second, third, fourth, and fifth tales in Comptes amoureux, illustrate in gory detail the punishment reaped by those who scorn true love. In the early sixteenth century, a great deal of popular French literature negotiated ideas of love and illustrated its trials and perils. Medieval, chivalric romances had long held great currency in the literary marketplace, but many works that once had enjoyed tremendous popularity were no longer being printed. In the years surrounding 1540, literary trends and reading tastes were undergoing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change that is attributable to a growing sense of the individual in relation to society. Consequently, readers began to seek increasingly perspicacious depictions of personal and societal relationships, and these new expectations provoked a reassessment of fiction.93 It was this atmosphere that contributed to the success of the roman sentimental, a genre that exploded in popularity in the 1530s, due, as Cathy Hampton explains, to its recycling of favorite literary tropes while experimenting with increasingly realistic and psychological illustrations of love’s turmoil and the obstacles, responsibilities, and decisions that individuals faced when attempting to experience or to resist love.94 Printers and writers recognized the sizeable readership of romans sentimentaux and engaged in the trans93. Marian Rothstein observes and discusses the changing practices in reading in a collection of essays that she edited, Charting Change in France around 1540 (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna Press, 2006), 142–51. 94. Cathy Hampton, “Re-Negotiating Past Contracts,” in (Re)Inventing the Past: Essays on French Early Modern Thought in Honour of Ann Moss, ed. Gary Ferguson and Cathy Hampton (Durham: University of Durham, 2003), 261–80. See also Gustave Reynier’s de-

Introduction 39 lation into French of a number of these vernacular Spanish and Italian works: La Prison d’amour and Les Amours d’Arnalte by Diego de San Pedro, Le Pérégrin by Caviceo, Le Jugement d’amour and La Déplorable fin de Flamète by Juan de Flores, to name but a few. Five years after Lyonnais printer Françoys Juste printed Flamète, he would print La Pugnition de l’amour contempné, extraict de l’amour fatal de madame Jane Flore. And this work would strike a chord for the contemporary reader of popular literature. In addition to the prefatory poem that converses directly with Flamète, the title chosen for the 1540 edition underscores common elements of the roman sentimental by focusing on the retribution and calamity resulting from the repudiation of love. The original, elusive work from which the tales purportedly were excerpted (extraict)—L’Amour fatal de Jane Flore—recalls the tragic end of the heroine in Scève’s 1535 translation. La Pugnition is packaged in a manner that identifies it as a roman sentimental. Its four tales—the stories of Méridienne and Pyrance, the ungrateful lady, Narcissus and Echo, and Nastagio—all illustrate various obstacles to love and the fulfillment thereof, and they depict in painful detail the psychological trauma of the rejected party. Where Jeanne Flore diverges from the genre is in the aspects of society that she critiques. Whereas the principal characters who populate romans sentimentaux tend to demonstrate rational pragmatism in that they make decisions based on weighing consequences and attempt to preserve their public image when societal constraints impede love,95 in the Pugnition tales, it is not social constraints that prove to be impediments to fulfillment in love. Rather, those who reject love do so because of their own personal and spiritual faults; all are guilty of excessive love of self. What we are dealing with in La Pugnition are narcissists, including the eponymous mythological character. And in Christian humanist circles, narcissism, also referred to as folle amour (mad or irrational love) or philautia via St. Paul,96 is one of the very cisive study of the evolution of the genre in Le Roman sentimental avant L’Astrée (Paris: Armand Colin, 1908). 95. Again, see Hampton, “Re-Negotiating Past Contracts.” 96. See 2 Timothy 3:4, in which Paul excoriates philautoi, or narcissists. Phailautoi seek wealth and pleasure, are prideful and reckless, unholy and inhumane, a group for godfearing people to avoid. For a sixteenth-century French translation of this passage, see Le

40 Introduction worst of sins. Jeanne Flore introduces the notion of reciprocity in love in Madame Minerve’s prefatory poem. Through that poem, she counters the negative image of love that Scève presents in his Flamète and presages the imminent burgeoning of a new literary genre: the querelle des Amyes. This fresh literary trend replaces the rational pragmatism of the roman sentimental with a rhetoric of exchange, reciprocity in love. In other words, when the beloved becomes cognizant that he or she is loved by another, that realization should in turn inspire the beloved to love in return.97 When Denys de Harsy prints a new edition (ca. 1542) of Jeanne Flore’s tales, Comptes amoureux par madame Jeanne Flore touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour, he repackages the print product by reducing to a subheading the importance formerly placed on punishment, which in turn moderates the book’s belonging to the roman sentimental genre. Three newly added tales—the first, sixth, and seventh—and a postliminary poem to the reader critique the current state of courtship, love, and marriage. Love and marriage certainly were the targets of discerning scrutiny and ubiquitous themes in romans sentimentaux, but the syncretic spirit of Christian humanism inspired writers to harmonize seemingly diverse traditions, to bring together the old and the new, thereby interweaving ideas that naturally complement one another, despite their provenance from disparate sources.98 Jeanne Flore’s Nouveau Testament de Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Nice 1525, ed. Le Groupe Oecuménique de Nice (Nice: Serre Éditeur, 2005). Lefèvre translates: “Et sache ceci: dans les derniers jours, les temps seront périlleux et les homes seront s’aimant eux-mêmes, convoiteux, élevés, orgueilleux, blasphémateurs, n’obéissant point à leurs pères et meres, ingrats, impurs, sans amour, sans paix, imposeurs de crime, sans continence, cruels, sans bénignité, taîtres, téméraires, enflés et amateurs de volupté plus que de Dieu, ayant l’apparence de (la) piété, mais reniant la force de celle-ci. Fuis ceux-ci” (272). 97. Hampton, “Re-Negotiating Past Contracts,” 273. 98. Paul Oskar Kristeller elucidates the concept of Renaissance syncretism, “a much broader historical and philosophical attitude,” in Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964). Using the works of Pico della Mirandolla to illustrate this phenomenon, he explains: “The term is taken from the syncretism of late antiquity, when, prior to the rise and victory of Christianity, the diverse religions of the many peoples who formed a part of the Roman Empire were considered compatible, and when their sundry divinities were assimilated and identified with those of the Greeks and

Introduction 41 Comptes amoureux, and the larger literary conversation of the querelle des Amyes, is a fascinating example of how writers engaged in this process, superimposing notions of love from the roman sentimental, Christian humanism, and neo-Platonism via the love philosophy of Leone Ebreo.

Telling Tales of Love in Lyon: La querelle des Amyes While scholars of French Renaissance literature have appraised the literary debate of the querelle des Amyes as both a hostile response to Castiglione’s portrayal of court life in Il Cortegiano and as a friendly intellectual debate,99 it is less the nature of this textual dialogue and more its sheer existence that informs our study of Jeanne Flore. The querelle des Amyes provides a rich context within which to read the tales of Comptes amoureux and it greatly elucidates the publication history of the work. Castiglione describes in his Book of the Courtier the ideal woman at court and the manner through which one may achieve spiritual love outside of wedlock. Bertrand de la Borderie initiates the querelle des Amyes in 1542 when he publishes L’Amye de court in Denys Janot’s Paris workshop; Étienne Dolet would follow later that year with an edition printed in Lyon. La Borderie counters Castiglione’s description by depicting Amye de Court, a calculating woman who intends to profit from court life by accepting men’s gifts without succumbing to folle amour (irrational love). Fearful of being bound to a domineering husband in an unhappy marriage, she aims to find a rich husband, whose wealth will eliminate potential financial troubles, allowing the couple to thrive and ultimately, to develop honneste amitié, a mutual and genuinely caring, loving relationship. Antoine Héroët responds Romans. With respect to Pico, the term refers to his belief that all known philosophical and theological schools and thinkers contained certain true and valid insights that were compatible with each other and hence deserved to be restated and defended” (59). 99. Tomarken, The Smile of Truth, 106, interprets the querelle des Amyes as a hostile French reaction to Castiglione’s description of the ideal court lady and gentleman. M. A. Screech, “An Interpretation of the Querelle des Amyes,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 21 (1959), 103–30, imagines a friendly joust among intellectuals. Cottrell, “Le Déplacement d’Éros par Anteros,” 117–35, also considers the debate in detail, focusing on the concept of love.

42 Introduction with his Parfaicte Amye, also printed by Dolet, in which the eponymous narrator praises the noble virtues of true love, in spite of society’s indifference, all while abstaining from the physical fulfillment of that love and remaining faithful to her husband. Jeanne Flore’s contribution to this debate, I argue, is a hybrid of these types, a society of women who seek love outside of wedlock, but only because their society’s antiquated practices tend to prevent its existence within marriage. Rosalie Colie, in her seminal study Paradoxia Epidemica, remarks that paradoxes “mark a regular edge to progressive thinking, a point at which ‘object’ turns into ‘subject.’ ”100 In La Borderie’s and Héroët’s works, the woman protagonist—in Jeanne Flore’s Comptes this would be the female storytellers—morphs into an active subject who seeks, obtains, and delights in love. These women, all of whom are wellborn and frequent court, were once objects useful for contemplation and reproduction, commodities to be bred and educated in preparation for future trading between families into a marriage that will profit both parties, but in these works, they manage to control their own happiness in love.101 Parfaicte Amye, the Perfect Lady-in-Love, maintains that experiencing love is even more fulfilling than accepting one’s station in life, a situation in which one may never have the opportunity to give or to receive love at all. Parfaicte Amye considers herself a victim of society’s constraints, and she advocates abandoning its restrictive laws and establishing a rule that is fair and just for women: “laissons les loix et leur severité / Et reduisons ma cause à équité.”102 Parfaicte Amye professes to enjoy a profound and spiritual love, but she is, however, a mal mariée. As such, she loves from afar, split between a societal obligation to her husband and genuine adoration for her beloved, with whom she awaits union in death.

100. See Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica, 7. 101. On the notion of women as commodities to be traded in marriage, see Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 27–29. 102. See Antoine Héroët, La Parfaicte Amye (Lyon: Étienne Dolet, 1542). I refer to Christine Hill’s critical edition, La Parfaite Amye (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1981), 11.

Introduction 43 Rather less dismal is Amye de Court’s stance. She, too, seeks true love, but aspires to achieve it within wedlock and through her own cunning. She encourages her suitors’ attention and gifts, but slyly asserts her independence by cleverly manipulating her chastity, thereby avoiding any obligation to one particular man.103 Amye de Court usurps societal convention and diverts any suitor’s potential hold on her, describing her strategy by innovating on a traditional trope: the assault of a castle. Amye de Court imagines herself locked up in a figurative tower, but she assumes an active role in her liberation. Jeanne Flore in turn calls on this image, either presaging or imitating La Borderie in the first tale that appears in Comptes amoureux. In this tale, Madame Melibée tells of another mal mariée, Rosemonde Chiprine, who is locked up in the Jealous Castle by her elderly, foul husband. She, too, achieves true love when her beloved Sir Andro liberates her both from the tower and from her mismatched marriage. Contrary to Rosemonde’s situation, however, Amye de Court’s incarceration is self-inflicted. She undermines the traditional role of captive and freely chooses her imprisonment as a means of self-preservation. Behind tower walls, she is shielded from any danger of succumbing to mad love, excessive love of self, flattery, and luxuries. All of these women, Parfaicte Amye, Amye de Court, and Jeanne Flore’s storytellers, seek to affirm their personal independence in matters of love and marriage. While such assertions of autonomy and cunning may appear laughable at best, or dangerous at worst, the rhetorical strategy of these works is that of irony. These women say things that they may not literally mean. Amye de Court praises dissimulation, but she ultimately seeks to overcome its necessity. Her fear of being trapped in a mismatched, unhappy marriage in which her husband could exert injuste tyrannie [unjust tyranny] rather than équité [equality]104 leads her to do what she must to tame her anxiety over this potential fate. While her conduct may seem unwise, or even preposterous, Amye de Court explains that her actions are merely an artifice and ruse, even a war, by which she gains knowledge of men, learns their habits, and masters their own game: 103. See Hampton, “Re-Negotiating Past Contracts,” 271. 104. See L’Amie de court (1542): “Car de tollir ce qu’ilz n’ont point donné / seroit statut assez mal ordonnée, / Plus procedant d’injuste tyrannie / Que d’equité […],” (25, lines 419–420).

44 Introduction Although I have a knowledge absolute Of enemies, their diligent pursuit— From watching all this time their skills in war— Not loss, but profit have I had the more: No sooner do they set their stratagem, Than I contrive to outmaneuver them;  Intelligence and wit are female graces It’s good to have at certain times and places. [J’ay toutesfois si seure intelligence, Des ennemys & de leur diligence, Que puis le temps de ceste guerre experte J’ai tire d’eulx [les hommes] plus de gaing que de perte Si tost qu’ilz font deliberation Je le sçay par Dissimulation, Femme de sens & de gentil scavoir, En temps & lieu il la faict bon avoir.]105 Amye de Court will lead a man to believe that her behavior reflects her heart, but, doubting his constancy, she will gain the advantage without his being aware: “Faisant semblant craindre qu’il me lairra / […] nous mentirons tous […] / Moy de l’aymer, luy de perseverer.” Growing ever more adept at her own game, Amye de Court perfects her faculty of discernment, and her keen observation ultimately should allow her to find a husband, a good match: In marriage only is my trust made whole: This must be every clever female’s goal For her own good, and early kept in view. As I have said before, dear girls, to you— A loathsome spouse shall bring you grief untold; A skillful one shall all your joys enfold. [Mon asseurance est le seul mariage, Qui est le but ou toute femme sage Doibt pour son bien de bon heure viser : 105. See L’Amie de court, 12–13 (lines 207–214).

Introduction 45 C’est ung grand mal ung fascheux espouser, Comme j’ay dict (filles) au paravant : Et grand plaisir d’avoir mary scavant.]106 By exercising her free will, which Amye de Court calls franc vouloir, she is able to preserve her personal liberty and as a result, ensure her happiness in marriage. She clearly sees, discerns, targets what she wants, and she acts in a manner that allows her to achieve that goal. In Amie de court, La Borderie addresses questions that are of primary importance in Christian humanist circles and central to discussions of marriage reform: the notion of Anteros, or reciprocal love, and personal liberty, or free will.107 Indeed, the choice of one’s spouse is a very deliberate exercise of free will, one that Rabelais expresses in the motto of his utopian abbey, Thélème: “fais ce que voudras.” Both Héroët and La Borderie call on the twin Cupid debate at some point in their extended poems, though perhaps not as explicitly as does Jeanne Flore. Amye de Court, for example, insists that if Cupid is unable to see, she will remove his blindfold so that he may clearly see that it is her power to see and to observe, not his, that influences her decisions. Similarly, in the year prior to the accepted launch of the querelle des Amyes debate, Clément Marot published a poem, Epistre à son amy en abhorrant la folle amour (ca. 1541),108 in which he speaks of a Cupid who blinds his victims, instigating a superficial, irrational love (folle amour) in which the victim, submissive to Cupid and losing all sense of honor, is unable to control his faculties and does not truly see or value the beloved. The poet describes irrational love as an error 106. L’Amie de court, 44–5 (lines 757–762). 107. Cottrell, “Le Déplacement d’Éros par Antéros,” 127–31, notes that personal liberty was the rallying cry of advocates of church reform, both Christian humanists and Lutherans. He explains: “la liberté était le don suprême du Christ à l’humanité, libérant les hommes des lois mosaïques et des diverses pratiques que l’église médiévale avait institutionnalisées. […] Il faut faire des choix, et ils doivent être faits de façon responsable. Une décision particulièrement cruciale est le choix d’un partenaire dans le mariage.” 108. See Marot, Œuvres poétiques, 2:153–56. Defaux indicates in n. 923 that this poem was first published in 1541 in Almanque Papillon’s Nouvel amour, the single extant copy destroyed in 1942. The poem was then published in Niccolo Leonico Tomeo’s Les questions problématiques du pourquoi d’amours (Paris: Alain Lotrian, 1543).

46 Introduction of youth and inexperience, but once corrected, the lover gains lucidity and insight: Just as Cupid binds a lover’s eyes, Without a thought, he covers ours likewise, But after ripping off his blindfold, we two Can see Love’s faults—which I now suffer through. [Comme aux aymans Cupido les yeux bende, Sans y penser nous benda de sa bende, Et desbendez quand nous fusmes tous deux, Veysmes l’erreur d’Amour, dont je me deulx.]109 By referring explicitly to the actions of blinding and blindfolding (bender/desbender) and to the faculty of sight (voir), the poet suggests that clear perception is essential in order to understand one’s flaws. And a sighted Cupid represents this clarity of vision. Likewise, a blind Cupid, his eyes hidden behind a covering, represents the inability to see the truth. Within the context of Christian humanism, Jacob Vance identifies the obstruction of, or the inability to see the truth as a “thematics of the veil.” The growing critique of intentional dissimulation often relied on the analogy of blindness (cecité) in order to express the need to remove any obstacle to understanding the word of the gospel, in other words, the need to lift the “veil” from the true spirit of the gospel.110 Guillaume Briçonnet, in a letter to Marguerite de Navarre, writes: «Bien par cecité sommes oublians noz estatz et vaccions, sçavions et clervoyans au monde et à la chair […].»111 Briçonnet suggests to Marguerite that by concealing God’s word, the church violates the principle of Christian charity. Likewise, he laments society’s blind obsession with worldly possessions and the material world. Christian 109. See Œeuvres poétiques 2:156 (lines 93–96). 110. See Jacob Vance, “Humanist Polemics, Christian Morals: A Hypothesis on Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron and the Problem of Self-Love,” MLN 120 Supplement (2005): S181–95. 111. See Guillame Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance (1521–1524), ed. Christine Martineau and Michel Veissière (Geneva: Droz, 1975), 180.

Introduction 47 humanist rhetoric advocates the removal of these obstacles that hinder true perception, obstacles that become impediments of true love and to true understanding of the gospel. Through careful and pointed thematic and lexical choices, Jeanne Flore adds her voice to this religious debate.

Love and Marriage as Religious Dissidence in Comptes amoureux In Jeanne Flore’s collection of tales, the author not only begins by calling on the image of a sighted Cupid, but the storytellers also find motivation for their storytelling in their desire to “convert” a dissident voice. The voice of Madame Cebille represents the Old Voice, an antiquated voice that associated women’s speech with lust, excess, and impropriety. But that Old Voice is also the voice of unenlightened religious thought, of a woman who is misguided by her blasphemous stance and consequently, unable to see the error in her judgment. The storytellers wish to aid their companion, to lift the veil from before her eyes, and Madame Minerve employs precisely the lexicon of Christian humanism: If this is Cupid’s manner of rendering justice (as it most certainly is), and if you believe me Madame Cebille, you could yet remove that veil from your eyes that prevents you from beholding your imminent pain, unless you persist in maintaining your false opinion. It truly grieves me to see you be the sole dissenter among so many wise ladies. I do not doubt that you will be punished and that your punishment is not far off. And then, after crying an abundance of tears, you will remember my sound admonitions, but you will remember them too late. (193–95) In her work, Jeanne Flore engages in a literary conversation with the roman sentimental, the querelle des Amyes, and the unofficial movement of Christian humanism. She questions the nature of love, the place of love in a woman’s life, and the manner of how a woman might

48 Introduction obtain love. Beneath Jeanne Flore’s seemingly preposterous proposal of free love lies a wise and insightful truth, a means of working the current system to one’s advantage. She offers a corrective parody of Scève’s roman sentimental, taking into account the soon-to-flourish debate of the querelle des Amyes, and the Christian humanist view of love that this literary conversation discusses. Jeanne Flore restores love to a healthy position: a reciprocal, loving relationship between two like-minded individuals, that is, two people who see one another clearly (no blindfold or veil impeding their vision), understand their compatibility, and consciously decide to share their lives. Jeanne Flore’s Comptes amoureux encourages women to take an active role in the shaping of their happiness. Ultimately, Madame Cebille, whose stance on love is that it is “mere fantasy and fairy-tale,” succumbs to irrational love. Her pride and unwillingness to consider her companions’ advice is eventually the source of her downfall, just as Madame Minerve cautions all noble ladies-in-love in the opening poem. In that poem, Madame Minerve excoriates folle amour, and she casts aside a now outdated depiction of love’s equivalent deity, Cupid. By extension, she encourages the reader to divert her attention away from the roman sentimental and toward the now burgeoning querelle des Amyes. In this work, presented as a female-authored version of a male predecessor’s book, Jeanne Flore dialogues with Juan de Flores and announces a new literary movement that holds more hope for changing women’s situation. The new brand of love that Jeanne Flore’s Comptes amoureux promotes is informed by the reciprocal love that authors associated with the querelle des Amyes support, Christian humanist writers. This syncretic approach reveals Jeanne Flore, whoever she is, to be an active reader of contemporary literature and an active participant in an intellectual and cultural world that discussed social change and church reform. Through her tales, Jeanne Flore will underscore the dangers of self-love and promote the development of true, compassionate love. Parfaicte Amye calls for équité in love, Amye de Court seeks honneste amytié. And in this unusual, paradoxical, parodical collection of tales, Jeanne Flore advocates pareil mariage, a well-matched marriage.

Introduction 49

A Note on the French Text A growing awareness of and sensitivity for gendered expression in the late twentieth century brought renewed interest to a number of female-authored works of the French Renaissance, including those of Marguerite de Navarre, Louise Labé, Pernette du Guillet and the Dames des Roches. It was within this context that Gabriel-André Pérouse and a team of scholars at the Centre Lyonnais d’Étude de l’Humanisme (CLEH) produced a critical edition of Comptes amoureux.112 This edition provoked widely varied interpretations of Jeanne Flore’s tales, and spawned a discussion of the problem of the work’s authorship and of its dating.113 In this edition, Pérouse maintains that the book was printed in 1536, suggesting that the collection was composed in the Italianate atmosphere of Lyon in the 1530s. In 2004, both William Kemp and Yoshihiro Kaji considered commonalities in the material presentation, particularly damage to woodblocks used in printing illustrations in Comptes amoureux and other imprints produced by the same printer, Denys de Harsy.114 Both Kemp’s and Kaji’s studies point to a plausible 112. See note 19 above. Pérouse based this edition on the sixteenth-century edition bearing the Icarus printer’s device, “la marque d’Icare,” now associated with the Lyonnais printing workshop of Denys de Harsy. Francis Johns notes that the Harsy device displays the figure of Daedalus (“la marque de Dédale”) rather than Icarus. See “Denys de Harsy and Orion,” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 63 (1988): 122–125. 113. In his 1977 study of the short genre in sixteenth-century French literature, Pérouse identifies the Harsy edition as the editio princeps and proposes a publication date of 1531. See Gabriel-André Pérouse, Nouvelles françaises du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1977). As of this writing, the catalogue entry at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (Rés 813259) still indicates a 1531 publication date for the Harsy edition of Comptes amoureux. Soon thereafter, Claude Longeon put forward the date of 1539, basing his judgment on similarities between the first tale and the early poetry of humanist writer and printer Étienne Dolet. Based on those similarities, Longeon goes so far as to suggest Dolet’s involvement in the composition of the tales. See Longeon, “Du nouveau sur les Comptes amoureux de Jeanne Flore,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 44, no. 4 (1982): 605–12. 114. See Yoshihiro Kaji, “Recherche de la date de publication des Comptes amoureux portant la marque d’Icare, plus précisément la marque de Dédale, comme l’indique Rawles. Études sur les ‘Comptes amoureux,’ ” Gallia: Bulletin de la société de langue et de littérature françaises de l’Université d’Osaka 43 (2004): 1–7. See also William Kemp, “Denys de Harsy et François Juste vers 1540: de La Pugnition de l’Amour contempné aux Comptes amoureux,” Actualité

50 Introduction chronology of the various sixteenth-century editions of Jeanne Flore’s work: 1. La Pugnition de l’Amour contempné, extraict de L’amour fatal de madame Jane Flore. Lyon: Françoys Juste, 1540. 2. La Punition de l’Amour contempné, extraict de “l’Amour fatal” de Madame Jeanne Flore. Paris: Denys Janot, 1541. 3. Comptes amoureux par madame Jeanne Flore touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour. Lyon: s.n., s.d. [Denys de Harsy, 1542] 4. Comptes amoureux par madame Jeanne Flore, touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour. Paris: Jehan Real for Arnoul l’Angelier, 1543. 5. Comptes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore, touchant la punition de ceux qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour. Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1574. When setting out to translate Comptes amoureux into English, I felt very strongly about including the original French text for immediate comparison. Pérouse’s scholarly edition has long been out of print, and in the thirty years since its production, much work has been accomplished that is of significant interest to the student and scholar of Jeanne Flore, of early modern gender and literary studies, and of book history and print culture. This Other Voice volume aims to situate Comptes amoureux within these contexts. In preparing the French transcription, I relied on Denys de Harsy’s imprint of Comptes amoureux, which we now believe to have been printed around 1542, as this was the first edition of Jeanne Flore’s work containing all seven tales. While at this writing I have not been able to consult every available copy of this edition in person, I was able to compare those available in Lyon and in Paris, which appear identical.115 Other copies de Jeanne Flore: dix-sept études, ed. Diane Des Rosiers-Bonin, Éliane Viennot, and Régine Reynolds-Cornell (Paris: Champion, 2004), 269–91. 115. As of this writing, the copy located at the Bibliothèque national de France (Rés. Y21979) is mismarked in the catalog entry as being a copy of the 1574 edition. The bibliographic description of both title pages and the two copies’ collation formula are as follows and are my own. Title: Comptes amou / reux par Madame Ieanne Flore, tou- / chant la punition que

Introduction 51 are located in Chantilly at the Musée Condé and in New York at the Morgan Library.116 For those interested in variants among earlier and later editions of Jeanne Flore’s work, Pérouse’s edition is an invaluable resource.117 The Harsy edition of Comptes amoureux does include page numbers, but they appear only on the upper right-hand corner of the front (recto) side of each leaf. For ease in comparing the French text with the English translation, as well as with the original Harsy edition (available on Gallica), I include the recto (r) and verso (v) notations in square brackets at the start of each new page. Thus, the notation [1r] indicates to the reader that the text that follows can be found on the recto side of the first page; [1v] indicates where the following page begins (the back side of page one), and so on. The two copies of the Harsy edition that I consulted—those found at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon and the Bibliothèque nationale de France—contain 84 numbered leaves, or 168 pages. In transcribing the French text, I chose not to modernize the spelling and punctuation, but rather to preserve sixteenth-century conventions. The facing-page English translation will facilitate its reading for those unaccustomed to the French language of this period. My only changes to the original French are the replacement of j for i and of v for u where appropriate, as well as the replacement of printer’s abbreviations used at the time in order to save space on the printed page, for example & becomes et, and I have added the missing consonant where a tilde (~) denotes a nasal vowel (for example, I transcribe õ as on).118 For reasons of space, it was not possible to faict Venus / de ceulx qui contemnent & / mesprisent le vray / Amour. / [device: typ. orn. (oval frame containing picture of Daedalus flying and pointing simultaneously at the sun and a lake below; the word MEDIOCREMENT is printed across the center of the picture; outside of the frame in the four corners of the woodblock are the words ne / haut / ne / bas) – 55 x 74 mm.] / Auec priuilege. Formula: 8°A-I8K8L4($4 sign.)[i]ii-lxxxiiii. 116. The Morgan Library’s copy of Comptes amoureux (127709.1–2) further supports Kemp’s and Kaji’s dating of the book to 1542. This copy, with its sixteenth-century vellum binding still intact, was bound together with another of Denys de Harsy’s imprints, Droictz nouveaux, which bears a 1542 publication date. 117. See Contes amoureux, “Variantes et témoins du texte,” 227–42. 118. Those interested in comparing my transcription with the original may consult the Lyon and Paris copies of the Harsy edition on Gallica.

52 Introduction reproduce all of the woodcut illustrations from the 1542 edition, but I have indicated where they were placed in the transcription of the French text.119 In this edition, the printer generally relies on woodcuts and blank spaces to express visually how the text is structured. Often, a woodcut accompanies a title or subtitle to communicate to the book’s user where tales begin and end, or where a significant moment occurs. Certain of the woodcuts are suggestive of the general atmosphere of the book, for example, groups of women who appear to be conversing, Cupid aiming his bow, or a gentleman approaching a castle. Other woodcuts come closer to illustrating specific moments in a tale, and the printer even modifies his stock woodcuts with the addition of movable type, personalizing an illustration with the name of a central character in the tale.120 The woodcuts are not, however, unique to Comptes amoureux, as several of Denys de Harsy’s works contain these illustrations, including Droictz nouveaux, which may in fact have been printed in the same year as Comptes amoureux.121

Translator’s Note: Prose Translating Jeanne Flore’s prose into English was a challenging endeavor requiring several important, strategic decisions.122 Nearly five 119. I encourage those interested in the woodcut illustrations in the various editions of Comptes amoureux to consult the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s digital library website, Gallica. See the bibliography for further information. 120. See, for example, the story of Meridienne and Pyrance, where the printer adds the name “Pyrance” to a woodcut used in other books (38r). 121. See note 117 above and my photographs comparing these two books in Appendix 2, 299–302. The bibliographic description of the title page and collation formula of Droictz nouveaux are as follows. Title: Droictz nouueaux / publiez de par messieurs les Senateurs / du temple de Cupido, sur lestat & / police Damour pour auoir / ente[n]du le different de plu / sieurs amoureux & / amoureuses. / [fleuron ¦ – 4 x 4 mm. ]/ [vignette: typ. orn. (Daedalus) – 55 x 74 mm.] / Auec Priuilege. Formula: 8°A-I8K-N8($4sign.)O4($3sign.). 122. Sandor Hervey and Ian Higgins in Thinking French Translation: a course in translation method: French to English (New York: Routledge, 2002), define strategic decisions: “The first set of reasoned decisions taken by the translator. These are taken before starting the translation in detail, in response to the following questions: ‘What is the translation brief, i.e. what are the purpose and intended audience of my translation? What is the purpose of this ST [Source Text]? What genre does it belong to, and what audience is it aimed at? What is its message content? What are its salient linguistic features? What are its principal effects?

Introduction 53 hundred years separate us from the cultural context within which this work was written, evident in the frequent references to classical, medieval, and contemporary literature and history. At the risk of distracting the reader, I offer full glosses of these references in the endnotes to contextualize these examples within the tales. In addition to the differences in the literary and historical knowledge base of today’s reader and the reader contemporary to Jeanne Flore is the difficulty of the language. The French language—its spelling, syntax, use of punctuation, and lexicon—has evolved and has been standardized significantly since the mid-sixteenth century. Lengthy, often seemingly endless, sentences are not unusual in the tales. I chose to break up the most problematic sentences into more manageable ones, occasionally setting off asides or explanations within those sentences in parentheses and introducing paragraph spacing where appropriate. Apart from the grammatical difficulties of the language is the challenge of preserving the tone of that language. Comptes amoureux ostensibly reproduces in printed format tales that were performed and discussed orally as a means of passing time more pleasurably. The mark of orality—direct addresses to the reader and introductions, interjections, and conclusions made by the storytellers—recur throughout the collection. I aimed to reproduce this “feel” of camaraderie and levity by translating the ever-present “amoureuses dames,” “mes amoureuses compaignes,” or “cheres et amoureuses dames” as “ladies-in-love,” “my fellow ladies-in-love,” “my dear ladies-in-love,” and this convention also serves to signal where the storytellers interject comments within their tales. Lastly, I aimed to recreate to the extent possible the material presentation of the 1542 edition of Comptes amoureux. To that end, I note the original pagination, placement of the woodcut illustrations, and in the notes to the translation, I indicate where each new gathering begins. In the original French imprint, the printer identifies each gathering with a signature, a combination of letters and numbers printed at the bottom of the recto side of a leaf that indicates how to properly fold a large printed sheet. The signatures, among other elements, guide us in determining the printed format of a book. Comptes What are the implications of all these factors? If a choice has to be made among them, which ones should be given priority in ensuring that the TT [Target Text] is fit for its purpose?” (6).

54 Introduction amoureux was printed in a small, octavo format. In other words, each sheet was printed and folded in such a way that resulted in eight leaves of printed text: sixteen pages using the front and back (recto and verso). There are ten gatherings, or quires (cahier in French), of eight leaves in Comptes amoureux, labeled “a” through “k,” omitting “j,” as there was no typographical distinction between “j” and “i” at the time. Four additional leaves, the “l” gathering, complete the book.123 These bibliographic signposts not only ease comparison of the original French prose with the translation, but also remind us of the book’s status as an historical artifact, a book produced mechanically in the first century of printing. And in a book that marks itself consciously as such—for the namesake of the storyteller Madame Minerve, the goddess Minerva, was the patron goddess of printing in Lyon—this aspect of its history is integral to understanding the context of its larger literary world.

Translator’s Note: Poetry MARTA RIJN FINCH

Although the number of poems included in this work is small, the diversity of forms being used in Lyon during the early part of the sixteenth century is well represented. Ranging from the simple decasyllabic quatrain in the fifth poem to the more complicated rondeau of the fourth,124 they relate in spirit and in content to the prose of these colorful tales, tapping into the classical mythology and the Neoplatonic and Petrarchan influences of literary traditions that preceded them. Two of the poems, in fact, were written by Clément Marot, one of the most important poets of the period, who was himself responsible for contributing to that literary tradition. He translated Latin classics and was the first to edit the poems of the roguish François Villon 123. For an overview of descriptive bibliography, the study of the material presentation of a book, see Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927; reprint, New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994). See also Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994) and Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009). 124. See respectively “Not strength, or wealth, or beauty—their time so slight,” (231), in Tale Six, and “In languishment, weary, in sad dismay,” (169), in Tale Four.

Introduction 55 of the previous century. Villon’s work contained numerous ballades and rondeaux, two of the “fixed forms” of early French prosody. The first of Marot’s poems appears at the end of the opening tale.125 It is a neat octosyllabic huitain, forming a sort of square—eight lines of eight syllables each—and using three rhymes, one of them four times, in the typical pattern of ababbcbc. (Three such huitains strung together, with a repeated line and an envoi make up the French ballade.) The other Marot poem, in the fourth tale, is a rondeau—a form closely associated with this poet.126 This is a more complex pattern based on only two rhymes, consisting of thirteen decasyllabic lines, with an additional two lines of rentrement—a refrain of sorts that repeats the first one or two words from the opening line, as “en languissant” does here. The pattern of the rondeau is aabbaaabRaabbaR. The introductory poem is interesting for being a variation of one written earlier by Maurice Scève, another leader of the Lyonnais literary scene. The huitain form is used again, but this time in decasyllables, with a different rhyme scheme—one found in the medieval Spanish or Portuguese copla de arte mayor (abbaacca). The number of rhymes is consistent with the huitain of Marot, but here the a rhyme (not the b) appears four times.127 Since Scève had written the earlier huitain as preface to his translation of a Spanish tale, I thought that might explain the use of the Spanish rhyme-scheme appearing here; however, this turned out not to be the case, as Scève’s huitain followed the same traditional form as Marot’s poem.128 The fifth is another poem echoing an earlier work, with lines similar to an Italian ottava rima stanza (abababcc) in Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, first published in 1482. Curiously, the four lines here, rhyming abab, are not those of the first four lines of

125. See “No longer am I what I was,” (113). 126. Again, see “In languishment […],” (169). 127. I might mention in passing that Wordsworth used this pattern in half of his five-hundred sonnets as a variation on the Petrarchan octet, though it seems there is no reason for believing there was any connection. 128. See Kelly Peebles’s introduction for an analysis of important lexical differences in the two poems (22–33).

56 Introduction Boiardo’s ottava rima, but are closer to the final four, which include the ending couplet.129 Rhyming couplets make up the third and sixth poems,130 their decasyllabic lines translating neatly into the rhyming iambic pentameter so familiar to us as the English heroic couplets honed to perfection by Dryden and Pope in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, however, the couplets are not closed, as theirs so often were, but run over into the subsequent pair of lines in several places. The six lines of the third poem, in fact, divide cleanly in the middle, where three lines describe the speaker’s own grief and three give warning to the ladies she is addressing. In the sixth, there is blatant enjambment (a running over into the next line) from the beginning. This I follow in line 5, although not running into another couplet; that happens in the subsequent line. Note that there is even a stanza break after line 7, giving a further, visual, separation to the fourth couplet. Since these would be the first English translations for most of the poems in this volume, I chose to follow Jeanne Flore’s original meter and rhyme scheme, to provide the truest echo of the original. However, French prosody of that time allowed rime riche—rhymes consisting of homonyms (such as “heir” and “air”) as well as compounds of a word (such as tendre with entendre), and even the same word if used as a different part of speech or carrying a different meaning. In English these are not considered acceptable rhymes—“believe” and “leave,” are identicals, not true rhymes. There were some wonderful challenges to work with here; in the first poem, however, the ambiguity and skillful wordplay so typical of Marot was nearly impossible to echo in the English version, with the French tendre appearing in three of the eight lines. The first use is as an adjective, as in our tender-hearted; the second meaning is to pull taut—an active verb; and the third carries a double meaning: to bend or mold, from tendre, but adding “en” gives the word “entendre”—to listen. Hyphenating the word at line’s end gives (or at least hints at) an additional sense of reaching out, or being inclined toward—sort of “lending an ear.” 129. See further details in Peebles’s translation, Tale Six, n. 3, 290. 130. See “Venus has punished me, and rightly so,” (147) in the second tale and the final poem, “Madame Fusque having told her tale of love,” (261).

Introduction 57 Choices had to be made. Was Amour to be translated as Cupid or Love? What was one to do with esté (was) and Esté (summer) in the second poem?131 Vieillart (aged husband) and vieil art (ancient art) in the fourth? I resisted any temptation to use puns in the English which might have echoed the rime riche of the French, but might have introduced too farcical a flavor. There was a further problem with certain words such as adventure—meaning not so much a going forth to explore new lands, as we think of adventure today, but more luck, chance, mishap; something that has happened or come to pass almost by accident. Similarly, des­ plaisance (which looks like dis-pleasant) means unpleasantness, yes, but has the more serious sense of grief or anguish. The verb it is derived from, desplaire means to dislike, offend, anger, or vex, as well as to displease. Other words’ nuances had to be judged by their context, such as entier, meaning, according to Cotgrave—entire, whole, inviolate, steadfast, faithful, upright, honest, just, constant, etc. Since I was using the negative form in English,  should the opposite be “shriveled,” or “impure”? Given the backdrop of the tales, and considering the traditions from which they had sprung, the latter meaning seemed the more appropriate choice. The sense of fun in the original writing of these poems was evident as I translated them five centuries later, and I can only hope my renderings of them into their new language fit as well in Kelly Peebles’s delightful versions of Jeanne Flore’s Tales and Trials of Love.132

131. Again, see “No longer am I what I was,” (113). 132. For a further discussion of the difficulties—and pleasures—of rendering French Renaissance poetry into English, see my translator’s note in Pernette du Guillet, Complete Poems, 74–80.

COMPTES AMOUreux par Madame Ieanne Flore, touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour.

[printer’s device] Avec privilege.

TALES AND TRIALS OF LOVE, by Madame Jeanne Flore, Concerning Venus’s Punishment of Those Who Scorn True Love and Denounce Cupid’s Sovereignty.

[printer’s device] With privilege.

60 Comptes amoureux [A1v] MADAME EGINE MINERVE

aux nobles Dames amoureuses.

Gardez vous bien du Vray amour offendre, Lequel n’est pas comme on le painct, aveugle: Sinon en tant que les Cruelz aveugle, Qui n’ont le cueur entier, piteux, et tendre, Le voila ja tout prest de son arc tendre Contre qui n’ayme usant du malefice De Cruaulté: Doncques au sainct service D’amour vueillez de bon vouloir entendre.

Tales and Trials of Love 61 [A1v] MADAME EGINE MINERVE to Noble Ladies-in-Love.1

That you do not offend True Love,2 beware, For he is not, as he’s depicted, blind; Instead, he so afflicts those most unkind Whose cold and impure hearts lack tender care. See him already, with his bow, prepare To draw it on the loveless ones and use His evil cruelly. So then, please choose To listen, in Love’s name, with hallowed air.

62 Comptes amoureux [2r] EPISTRE.

Jeanne Flore à Madame Minerve sa chiere Cousine Salut.

Ma cousine, suyvant la promesse, que je vous avois faicte l’autre jour de vous transmettre les comptes de la punition de ceulx qui contemnent et mesprisent le vray Amour, lesquelz comptes bien à propos furent racomptez en vostre compaignie à ces vendanges dernieres (où estoient nos bonnes cousines et amyes: madame Melibée, madame Cebille, madame Hortence, madame Lucienne, madame Salphionne, madame Sapho, madame Andromeda, madame Meduse, et aultres nos voisines pour certain toutes de bonne grace et sçavoir, toutes, dis je, de gentille noblesse aornées), j’avois prinse la plume en main pour le vous mettre par escript. Puis tout soubdain je me suis advisée que je feroys chose tres agreable et plaisante aux jeunes Dames amoureuses, lesquelles loyaulment continuent au vray service d’amour, et lesquelles se delectent de lire telz joyeulx comptes, si je les faisois tout d’ung train gecter en impression. Ce que j’ay faict presentement: neantmoins soubs espoir que vous, et les humains lecteurs excuserez le rude et mal agencé langaige. C’est œuvre de femme, d’où ne peult sortir ouvraige si limé, que bien seroit d’ung homme discretz en ses escriptz. Telz donc qu’ilz sont, vous les prendrez en gré. Et adieu ma cousine, auquel je prie vous donner l’accomplissement de tous vos bons desirs.

Tales and Trials of Love 63 [2r] EPISTLE.1 Jeanne Flore to Her Dear Cousin Madame Minerve Greetings.

My cousin,2 following the promise that I made to you the other day to give you a copy of some stories (these stories concern what happens to those who condemn and scorn true love), I took the quill in hand to write them out for you.3 You witnessed the telling of these very pertinent stories at the recent wine harvest.4 Our dear friends and relatives, Madame Melibée, Madame Cebille, Madame Hortence, Madame Lucienne, Madame Salphionne, Madame Sapho, Madame Andromeda and Madame Meduse were present at this event, as well as a few other acquaintances of good grace and learning.5 Indeed, I dare say that all of these women are of gentle birth.6 As I was writing I suddenly thought to myself that it would be a most agreeable and pleasant thing for young ladies-in-love (especially for those young ladies who persist loyally in their devotion to Cupid and who take great pleasure in reading such joyful stories) if I were to have those stories printed at once. And I did just that, hoping nevertheless that my readers will excuse my unpolished and poorly composed writing. This is the work of a woman, after all, and one cannot expect it to be as finely executed as that of a man of greater skill. Thus, do with these stories what you will. And I bid you Godspeed, my dear cousin, to whom I pray for the fulfillment of all your heart’s desires.7

64 Comptes amoureux [2v] COMPTE PREMIER

par madame Melibée. [woodcut] Madame Melibée apres que la jeune Salphionne eust mist fin à son compte, ou receut asses plaisir toute la compaignie, print la parolle, et dit: «Je avois totallement entreprins, et deliberé, cheres Compaignes, des que madame Cebille commenca son acerbe accusation à l’encontre de la sacrosaincte divinité d’Amour, et tout l’estat des amoureuses Damoiselles, de prendre la deffence en main, et de vertueusement confuter la faulse et non veritable opinion, qu’elle a mise en avant: ne fut que je me superceday de cella faire lors que j’apperceuz madame Lucienne y entrer, tant pource qu’elle est de moy peu plus aaigée, et en ce temps, qui voluntiers par le long usaige des choses en cest endroit D’amour, luy apporte certaine, et plus seu[3r]re congnoissance: que aussi j’estimois que l’honneur par dessus toutes celles de nous, que icy sumes soustenans le party amoureux, luy est deu: et qu’elle en ces affaires, c’est au train d’amours, est plus exercitée car que vous le saichés, cheres compaignes, il n’y a encores demy an passé que je suis entrée en celluy tressainct service. Si est ce pourtant qu’il ne sera à mon advis impertinent, si je vous racompte ung faict, par lequel le sainct Amour entre plusieurs aultres ses divins et opportuns secours voulut jadis donner à congnoistre à ses humbles et loyaulx subjects quelle est sa propense et secourable affection envers eulx: et pour demonstrer que la bonne déesse sa mere est tousjours nuyct et jour en continuelle veille pour ayder à son peuple sans qu’elle le vueil le laisser cheoir en perilleux desordre. Aultrement je vous demande, par quelle bonne faveur et ayde eschappent les Amoureux de tant, si gros, si dangereux, si funestes, dommageables, et horribles dangers? A vostre advis, mes Dames, qui a diminué et rompu par cy devant les forces, entreprinses, et aguaicts occultes de nos maris jaloux: se n’a esté icelle nostre bonne beneficque et secourable Déesse? Car quant a ceulx qui sont demeurez morts emmy les perilz, comme vous a amplement deduict madame Lucienne, ilz n’estoient vrais, entiers, ne loyaulx Amants: ou bien, possible, maladvisez avoient en quelque chose les haultaines et divine

Tales and Trials of Love 65 [2v] TALE ONE Told by Madame Melibée.

After young Salphionne had finished her story,1 which the whole group enjoyed very much, Madame Melibée took the floor and said: “As soon as Madame Cebille2 had begun her bitter indictment of the sacrosanct divinity of Cupid (and generally of all young ladies-in-love), I decided to take it upon myself to defend him and vehemently refute her faulty and completely unwarranted stance. I had only just begun when I saw Madame Lucienne enter the room. Since she is just slightly older than I (and since in this day and age it is understood that this gives her a certain—and more reliable [3r]—expertise in matters of love), I suppose that she deserves to be honored above all of us who count ourselves among Cupid’s numbers. In these matters (that is to say in the business of love) she is more experienced than you may realize, dear friends. “As for me, scarcely six months have passed since I entered into love’s most holy service. Despite my inexperience, I do not think it impertinent of me to tell you about one particular deed (among many other divine and timely acts of salvation) that Cupid carried out as proof of the care and consideration that he extends to his humble and loyal subjects. I also wish to demonstrate that his mother, the great goddess Venus, tirelessly and continuously maintains a vigil (both day and night) so that she may help her subjects, hoping to avert any potentially perilous mischance.3 “Without her intervention, mind you, how could lovers possibly escape from all of those great, dangerous, deadly, harmful, and horrible dangers that tend to befall them? For of what use is good judgment? And who else could conceivably help them? In your opinion, my ladies, who else has heretofore succeeded in diminishing and diverting the violence, plotting, and secret ambushes of our jealous husbands if not our very benevolent, pleasure-giving savior, the goddess Venus? And as for those who already have met the perils of death (Madame Lucienne amply explained to you how this can happen), those persons either were not true, complete, or loyal lovers, or they may have ill-advisedly offended the powers-that-be. But as I said before, Madame

66 Comptes amoureux puissances offencées. Mais de cecy a esté assez par madicte Dame Lucienne parlé en sa deffense. Ve[3v]nons à mon compte, lequel il vous plaira toutes en silence diligemment escouter et cognoistre. De Pyralius, qui feit ediffier le Chasteau jaloux: avec la description dudict Chasteau. [woodcut] En la ville de Tholose naguiere demeuroit ung riche, et tresopulent homme nomme Pyralius. Lequel avoit pour espouse une moult belle Damoiselle, qu’on appelloit par nom madame Rosemonde Chiprine. A cestuy Pyralius certes villain de meurs et non assez apte pour servir une si jeune Dame telle qu’estoit la dame Rosemonde, au faict et lucte du delicieux Amour, la naturelle chaleur par longues maladies estoit faillye, et ja estaincte par le merite de ses longs et vieulx ans, et oultre ce, se trouvoit si difforme et malheureux en [4r] beaulté, qu’il ressembloit plus tost quelque monstre, que non pas homme humain: car il eust la teste grosse et lourde, herissée de rude et aspre cheveleure, ja envieillie et grise, le front ridé, les sourcilz gros et espaix, les yeulx tous chassieux et enfoncez en la teste, les joues plattes et maigres, le nez aquilin et long, tant qu’il attouchoit presque jusques au menton: qui le contraignoit parler à voix enrouëe et casse, le col trespetit et gros assis sur espaulles clinantes miserablement vers terre non en aultre facon que de ces anciens corps qui pas a pas cheminent à la mort: il avoit tousjours la couleur pasle, et fade, comme si les puantes harpyes luy eussent halené sus le visaige, et son manger treshordement pollu. De l’estomach luy issoit une espaisse et fetide haleyne à travers une puante, noyre et baveuse bouche: si qu’il sembloit l’exhalation d’Avernus, par ou descendit Eneas aux Enfers. Une seiche touz, griefves douleurs de flans et de reins, catherres dangereux, pourriture de poulmon confligeoient nuict et jour sans repos avec luy: de sorte, Amoureuses Compaignes, que encores me prent il pitie et grande compassion que si belle Damoiselle les dures destinées à celle infamie et pourriture de mary voulurent joindre: car oultre ce il avoit les jambes playées, et les mains toutes bruslées de je ne sçay quel mal contagieux. Doncques cest elegant homme estant en celluy lamentable estat de sa personne, comme ont de coustume vieillars rassottez, s’enamoura de la jeune

Tales and Trials of Love 67 Lucienne has sufficiently spoken about such things. And now [3v] for my story. Let us have quiet please, so that you all may listen carefully and contemplate what I am about to say.” The Story of Pyralius, Who Built the Jealous Castle, Including a Description of That Castle.

Not long ago in the city of Toulouse, there lived a rich—indeed a very wealthy—man named Pyralius. He had for a wife an exceedingly beautiful young lady called Madame Rosemonde Chiprine.4 Pyralius, an illmannered man too inept to serve a young lady such as Rosemonde in the action and exercise of love’s delights, had lost his health to a prolonged illness and was, to be sure, wasting away. On top of that, he was so disfigured and uncomely [4r] that he looked more like a monster than a man. He had a large and heavy head; his unruly, bristly hair stood on end and was already gray with age; his forehead was wrinkled, his eyebrows large and thick, his bleary eyes set deep within his head, his cheeks hollow and gaunt, his nose hooked and so long that it nearly touched his chin (which constrained his speech to a hoarse and broken voice); his short and squat neck rested upon shoulders hunched miserably toward the ground, not much different from those ancient bodies that proceed step by step to death.5 He was always so pale and sallow that one might think that Harpies6 had exhaled their stinking breath right onto his face or that he ate nothing but garbage. A thick and foulsmelling breath came from deep within his gut and emanated from a rank, dark, and foaming mouth, a cavernous opening reminiscent of the one Aeneas found alongside Lake Avernus, through which he descended into the Underworld.7 A dry cough, grievous pains in his sides and back, dangerous apoplexies, and putrefaction of the lungs conspired day and night without relent, to the point, my ladies-in-love, that it still inspires great pity and compassion in me that the fates should link such a lovely young lady to this disgrace and fraud of a husband.8 On top of this, he had sores on his legs, and his hands were all burned from some strange type of contagious disease. Thus, this once elegant man, now in such a woeful physical state, fell in love with young Rosemonde, as childish, old men are wont to do. And since he [4v] was very rich and among

68 Comptes amoureux Rosemonde. Et pource qu’il [4v] estoit fort riche et des plus apparens de la ville, les pere, mere, et parens d’elle furent asses tost contens de la luy promettre et bailler à femme, par ce moyen estimans qu’elle seroit moult heureuse, et qu’ilz vauldroient beaucoup de telle affinité. La jeune Damoiselle estoit de l’aaige de quinze ans, et Pyralius de soixante six, tel homme certes que je vous l’ay depeignt. Pensez amoureuses compaignes, quel fut lors celluy mariaige entre deux personnaiges si mal convenans en toutes qualitez, tant vous en dis je que par celle difference sordit en peu de jours et s’engendra au cueur de l’infortuné Pyralius telle ardeur de Jalouzie, que son plaisir nuptial tourna en amaire tristesse et plaincte, l’asseurance en souspeçon eterne. Dont n’osoit il plus des lors en avant partir loing de sa maison, ne abandonner sa femme, non aultrement que l’avaricieux Euclio n’osoit perdre la veuë de l’huys de son hostel de paour qu’on ne luy desroba son thresor enfouy soubs la cheminée. Si advint que le Soleil ung jour espandit les dorez rais de sa lumiere par sus le chrystaline visaige de ceste cy: dont soubdain le vieillart infame entra en grosse frenesie et souspeçon. Si disoit: «Certes, Rosemonde, je ne permettray point que le blond Phœbus lascif et petulant Dieu vous voye si a loisir.» Puis alleguoit force fables et comptes des amoureux exploictz du Sire de l’isle Erratique: aussi de Juppiter, disant, que le plus souvent iceulx violateurs des chastes couches maritales, se transportoient en terre pour ravir les jeunes Da-[5r]moiselles, Par ce poinct perdit Agenor sa chere fille Europa, et Amphitrion de Thebes fut faict coquu. Ce disant le malheureux impertueusement serroit la fenestre. Or non seullement fut il en souspeçon contre le Soleil: mais si d’aventure une petite mousche se venoit poser dessus la Dame, en doulcement de sa bouche murmurant, luy irrité vehementement se dolousoit de l’oultraige, et en craincte qu’il n’y eust de la fraulde soubz celle espece de mousche, legerement accouroit pour la chasser bien au loing. Ainsi sans aulcun repos avoir vivoit Pyralius miserablement, mourant aussi chascun jour mille foys de mille mors horrendes et cruelles. [woodcut] Mais en fin pour estre quelque fois delivre de ceste peine, s’advisa qu’il feroit construire un fort chasteau: ou il peult asseurer ses souspeçons. Parquoy commanda venir force maistres Maçons et Charpentiers pour l’edifice commencer. Il estoit comme j’ay dit dessus,

Tales and Trials of Love 69 the most prominent in town, her father, mother, and family were eager to betroth their daughter and offer her as his wife, thinking that she would be exceedingly happy and that they would profit greatly from such an alliance. The young lady was fifteen years of age and Pyralius, sixty-six; I do not jest. Think, ladies-in-love, what marriage meant for two people so ill-suited for one another in all respects. And what’s more, due to this disparity, in just a few days Pyralius began to feel in his heart such a burning jealousy that his wedded bliss grew into bitter sadness, grievous lament, and boundless suspicion. So much so that he no longer dared to stray far from his house or abandon his wife; he was not much different from the avaricious Euclio, who dared not lose sight of the threshold of his home for fear that someone would steal the treasure that he had buried under the chimney.9 It so happened that the Sun cast its golden rays of light onto Rosemonde’s crystalline visage, instantly driving the reproachful old man into a frenetic fit of doubt. He said: “Certainly, Rosemonde, you mustn’t think that I would allow the blond, wanton, and impudent god Phoebus to gaze at you at his leisure!”10 Then, he evoked and recited an abundance of tales and stories of the amorous exploits of the god of the floating island and of Jupiter, insisting that those who most often violate the nuptial bed do so by magically conjuring their appearance on Earth so as to ravish young [5r] ladies.11 (This is how Agenor lost his dear daughter Europa and how Amphitryon of Thebes was made a cuckold.)12 While seething over this, the wretched man impetuously shut the window. Not only was he suspicious of the Sun, but if by chance a little fly came along to light gently upon the lady, despite its gentle, buzzing approach, he perceived it as a scandal and, suffering greatly and fearing that the little fly might be up to something dishonest, he would dart to chase it far away. And thus, without respite, Pyralius lived out his miserable life, dying a thousand times a day of a thousand horrible and cruel deaths. But, finally, in order to be once and for all delivered from this agony, he came up with the idea of having a fortified castle built where he could safeguard his suspicions. To that end, he invited many master masons and carpenters in order to start work on the edifice. As I already mentioned, he was a very wealthy and powerful man, and because of his wealth, the castle [5v] was very quickly completed. He and his beautiful wife went to live there, on a property located in the middle of his estate, which he

70 Comptes amoureux fort riche et puissant: dont fut le cha-[5v]steau à son devis assez tost fermé en ung marecaige loing de gens au millieu d’une sienne Seigneurie: et illec alla il demourer avec sa belle femme. Si ne vouloit souffrir que aulcun y entra quel qu’il fut, Beau pere ou belle mere, sinon les serviteurs et familiers Eunuches, dont il avoit grosse quantité, sans les chambrieres. En la forteresse, que les jeunes hommes amoureux nommerent le Chasteau Jaloux, avoit troys entrées. Et pour parvenir à la premiere, failloit passer ung pont, qui n’estoit point plus large de quatre piedz et vingt de longueur: et si encores nuyct et jour le faisoit il tenir levé. Au bout de celluy pont estoit bastie une grosse tour fortement maconnée, en laquelle se tenoit ung cruel et horrible Gean de la propre race de l’énorme Enceladus que Juppiter fouldroia, et mist soubz la montaigne de Etna en Cecile. Cestuy Gean estoit contemneur des haulx Dieux, aymant noises et debatz, avide de sang humain respendre plus, que ne fut oncques quelque Sicilien Cycloppe, ou quelque aultre inhumain Canibale mengeurs de gens. En ceste facon deffendoit Pyralius le passaige du pont à qui passer vouloit. Les fossez par dessoubz estoient si profonds et caves, qu’il sembloit droictement aux regardans que ce fut ung abisme. Ne la forte Cité du Roy de Molosse n’estoit edifiée en lieu plus hideux que cestuy cy. Il n’y avoit point d’appuyes sur le pont, parquoy quand le vent souffloit, on ne sy fut peu tenir de bout, et failloit passer à quatre piez qui n’eust voulu cheoir dens les fossez. Apres avoir [6r] passé oultre, on venoit à monter sur le deuxiesme: qui estoit d’une mesme longueur et largueur: et au bout d’icelluy avoit une aultre Tour pareille à la premiere, ou l’on nourrissoit ung espouventable et affemaé Lyon là enchainé pour la defence. Celluy qui occit en la forest Nemée le filz de Amphitrion n’estoit rien en comparaison à cestuy cy, car il se trouva mille fois plus cruel et dangereux. Une longue come luy couvroit la gueulle, et la poictrine, et estoit retortillee tellement qu’en elle se formoient en la reflection du poil mille anneaux: et c’estoit horrible chose à veoir luy commencer son ire. Car si merveilleusement se frottoit la queuë en terre, et la se retournoit vers les reins en tant grande vehemence qu’il sembloit droictement que la tour tumba en quartiers: comme à l’assault et prinse de Illion le Pallais de Priam, une grosse tour tumba par tel horribleté et bruyt, qu’il fut advis aux Mirmidons que le Monde deubt finer et retourner en son antique chaos.

Tales and Trials of Love 71 specifically chose because it was far from all civilization and surrounded on all sides by inhospitable swampland. Furthermore, he would not allow anyone to enter his castle (not even his mother- and father-in-law), except for the servants and household eunuchs (of which he had a large quantity) and the chambermaids. This fortress, which young men-in-love called the Jealous Castle, had three points of entry. In order to get to the first one, one had to pass over a bridge that was just barely four feet twenty inches in length, and which he kept raised both day and night. At the end of this bridge was a stout, heavily reinforced, stone tower, inhabited by a cruel and horrible giant belonging to the same race as the enormous Enceladus, whom Jupiter defeated and buried underneath Mount Etna in Sicily.13 The giant whom Pyralius employed scorned the gods, thrived on dispute and unrest, and was even more bloodthirsty than the Sicilian Cyclops, or any other inhumane cannibal, for that matter.14 Pyralius defended his bridge against trespassers in the following manner. The moat underneath was so deep and sunken that when one peered down inside, it looked to be a bottomless chasm. Not even the fortified stronghold of Alexander Molossus, king of Epirus, could inspire such a sense of dread.15 There were no supports on the bridge, so that one had nothing to grasp, and when a strong wind blew, one could scarcely stand up and had to crawl across on all fours for fear of falling into the moat. After crossing [6r] the first bridge, there was a second of equal length and width, at the end of which stood another tower just like the first one, but here, Pyralius had chained a fierce, famished lion to act as further defense. The Nemean lion killed by Amphitryon’s son was nothing in comparison to this one; indeed, it was a thousand times more cruel and threatening.16 The long mane covering its mouth and chest was so badly tangled that it looked as though his fur were made up of thousands of twisted knots. Its anger was horrible to witness, for its tail would thwack impressively against the ground and then careen backwards with such great force that one nearly expected the four corners of the tower to come crashing down, just as during the fall and capture of Priam’s palace at Illium, where a great tower fell with such resounding horror that Achilles’s soldiers, the Myrmidons, believed that the world was certainly coming to an end and would return to its former state of chaos.17

72 Comptes amoureux Que s’il advenoit que aulcun se fust virillement combatu, et eust vaincu le Gean, et le Lion occis, s’approchoit du tiers pont de telle largeur que les aultres deux premiers, mais il estoit de trente piedz de long tousjours levé en hault à grosses chaines de fer que aulcun ne passa estant le Gean endormy, et le Lyon enchainé. Et que pis estoit, Pyralius le faulx jaloux pour plus endommaiger son ennemy, commandoit lever les deux ponts s’il les avoit oultrepassés, et faisoit coucher sondict ennemy toute nuyct sans luy bailler chose qu’il soit pour menger. Puis sus le [6v] matin on venoit à avaller le dernier pont, au bout duquel se gettoit au devant qui venoit un venimeux et horrible Dragon attaché à deux grosses chaines de fer de la longueur de quinze piedz. Or comme je vous racompte, mes Compaignes, Pyralius le villain tenoist sa femme enclose à tort et sans raison en celle forte chartre: et plusieurs jeunes chevalliers eulx mettans en peine pour sa delivrance furent occis, et en martyre devorés. Dont ne se povoit guiers tenir contente la Dame: au fort n’en osoit elle faire semblant, et entretenoit pour avoir paix le mieulx que possible estoit son jaloux mary. Mais apres comme faict le prisonnier, lequel par quelque temps se soustient en bonne esperance d’eschapper, à la fin se fache par trop: et se desesperant pour tous remedes ne faict fors lamenter, et piteusement remplir la grotte de pitoiables gemissemens: et là tout l’estat de sa bonne fortune passée luy revient au devant des yeulx: ou comme celluy qui est blessé au comencement que la plaie est chaulde, facilement seuffre que le Chirurgien la traicte et manie. Mais le lendemain ne se peult contenir de crier pour la douleur qu’il sent: ainsi la pauvre Damoiselle en fin aiant ennuy de si longue prison, à par elle plouroit et lamentoit piteusement en sa chambre. Puis humblement à genoux estoit en continuel prier vers la bonne Desse Venus qu’il luy pleust briefvement la getter hors de celle calamiteuse vie. Souvent sus les aultez d’icelle Deesse faisoit de opulens sacrifices: non aultrement que [7r] Hyarbas desdaigneux et mal content du refuz de la femme de Sicheo, demandoit vengeance aux Dieux. [woodcut] Parqouy advint que la bonne Dessee: ainsi que les voisines en pitie, et douleureuses contemplent la mere, sur l’enfant de laquelle par male meschance une charrette aura foulé dessus, getta ses celestes et pitoiables yeulx dens le chasteau Ialoux, s’arresta longuement sus

Tales and Trials of Love 73 And if it so happened that anyone should have the strength and courage to fight and defeat the Giant and then kill the Lion, he would arrive at a third bridge just as wide as the other two, but thirty feet long and always drawn up by large, iron chains so that no one would be able to cross it, not even if the Giant were asleep and the Lion chained up. And to make matters worse, in order to further torment his enemy, that fraudulent, jealous husband Pyralius would order that the two bridges be raised whenever someone crossed them, thereby trapping his enemy and forcing him to sleep there all night without giving him anything to eat. Then, in the [6v] morning, someone would come to lower the last bridge, at the end of which a poisonous, horrible Dragon attached to two heavy chains fifteen feet in length would throw itself into the path of anyone who trespassed. Now, keep in mind what I told you, my friends. Pyralius was wrong and irrational to lock up his wife in this stronghold, and several young knights, who went to great pains to deliver her, were killed, victimized by their very attempt to save her. Lady Rosemonde found little joy in her present state (at least she would not dare let on that she did), and she did everything within her means to keep the peace with her jealous husband, to the extent that it was possible to do so. When a young knight was made prisoner, he would sustain the hope of escaping for a short while, but would end up exhausting himself and, losing all hope of freedom, would only lament and miserably fill the cave with his pitiful wailing. Then, he would see his life and everything he had lost pass before his eyes, much as one who is injured will happily suffer while the surgeon treats and dresses his wounds, but the following day can no longer withhold the tears of pain. Thus, the poor young lady, utterly distressed by her lengthy imprisonment, herself cried and grieved miserably within the confines of her room. Then, she knelt humbly and prayed relentlessly to the good goddess Venus that it might please her to release her subject from this wretched life. She often made lavish sacrifices on the goddess’s altar, much as did Iarbas [7r] who, scornful and unhappy about being refused by Sychaeus’s wife Dido, asked the gods for vengeance.18 Rosemonde’s pious display so moved the great goddess that she was inspired to direct her celestial and sympathetic attention onto the Jealous Castle (one might observe a similar reaction when pained, concerned bystanders cannot help but stare at a mother whose child, by

74 Comptes amoureux la miserable Damoiselle, et considera asses l’iniquité, et jalouzie de Pyralius le reputant digne totallement de grieufve et horrible punition. Mais affin que la pouvrete ne devint paresseuse apres un long crier en l’esperance du tardif secours, tourna ses divins yeulx misericors vers Amour son filz: auquel elle dit en ceste facon: «O filz Amour ma seulle force et puissance: duquel sort toute mon auctorité, certes il me prent grande pitie et commiseration de la Damoiselle, laquelle en ce poinct Pyralius à tort par seulle Jalouzie, et en mon despit detient estroictement fermée: comme [7v] si les cueurs des jeunes Dames estoient retenuz par telles rudesse vilaines. O mon filz, si les miens ennuys te sont, (comme certes ilz sont) aulcunement grief et pesans, je te prie pourveoy, et donne secours à mon humble Servante: qu’elle ait breifvement delivrance de sa personne, et l’entiere fruition de ses desirs. Ainsi parloit Venus à son cher filz: Dont luy grandement marry du dueil de sa dame de mere, et joyeulx de son commandement: lequel d’accomplir plus prest, que n’estoient pas les tempestueux vents d’obeir à leur Roy Eolus, quand Juno le depria qu’il voulsist en sa grace les navires ennemies flottans en la mair Thirrenne submeger: comme le genereux cheval soubz son chevaucheur s’esmeust pour desplacer, à peine pouvoit attendre quelle eust mist fin à son propos. [woodcut] Si se despart soubdain de son tier ciel: et esbranlant les aëles avec ung doulx bruit, sembloit le pigeon, lequel se levant de terre faict haultement ses plumes resonner, apres s’escoulant par le meil[8r]lieu de l’air paisible faict son chemin. Mais pas n’oblia au partir de prendre L’arc Amoureux et ses traictz ferrés les ungs de plomb rebouchés: et les aultres de fin or reluisant. De l’ung d’iceulx fut frappé à travers le cueur le blond Phœbus, et de l’aultre la Nymphe Peneïde. Tant volla le filz de la Deesse de Paphos qu’il arriva es jardins des Herperides: et là quelque peu se reposa sus ung arbre, qui estoit tout chargé de pommes d’or: desquelles il cueillit deux ou trois qu’il emporta quant et soy: apres reprenant son vol tira vers le Chasteau de Pyralius le Jaloux. Dedalus, qui Jadiz en Crete feit le desvoié labyrinthe, a peine eu peu entrer, ne sortir de cestuy Chasteau, tant estoit fortement construict, et bien gardé. Mais le filz de la Déesse Chiprienne, emplumé, ayant en

Tales and Trials of Love 75 some ghastly mischance, had been run over by a cart). She reflected at length on the miserable young lady and sufficiently considered Pyralius’s iniquity and jealousy, deeming him worthy of a grave and horrible punishment. But, so that the poor soul would neither exhaust herself crying nor abandon all hope of her eventual salvation, Venus turned her divine and merciful eyes toward her son Cupid and said to him in this manner: “Oh, Cupid my son, you singlehandedly defend and protect me, and in you I invest my full authority. I do so pity and sympathize with the young lady whom Pyralius now wrongfully holds in his firm grasp—out of pure jealousy and in spite of me—as [7v] if he believes that young women’s hearts could be won over by such vile incivilities. Oh, my son, if my troubles are at all grievous and burdensome to you (and certainly they must be), I pray you take heed and come to the aid of my humble servant so that she may swiftly be freed and granted her heart’s desires.” Venus spoke thusly to her dear son. He was greatly afflicted by his mother’s sorrow and rejoiced in her request, which he was so eager to accomplish that he could scarcely wait for her to finish speaking. But he acted not as the tempestuous winds that did not wish to obey their king Aeolus when Juno requested that he do her the favor of submerging enemy ships that were floating in the sea near Thera.19 Rather, he behaved as would a magnanimous warhorse, honored to have the privilege of carrying his knight-rider to his destination. And so Cupid swiftly left his perch in the third heaven, beating his wings as gently as a pigeon taking flight, its feathers resonating as it glides on high through the calm air and [8r] makes its way.20 But he did not forget upon leaving to take with him his infamous bow and arrows, some cast of dull iron and others of fine, shining gold. One of these had been used to strike blond Phoebus’s heart and the other, the nymph Daphne, daughter of Peneus.21 And so flew the son of the goddess of Paphos until he arrived in the garden of the Hesperides, the daughters of Night and Darkness, where he rested underneath a tree laden with golden apples, of which he picked two or three to carry away with him.22 Then, he took off again, flying toward the castle of that jealous man, Pyralius. Even Daedalus, who had long ago created the bewildering labyrinth in Crete,23 could hardly enter or exit this castle, for it was built quite strongly and guarded quite well. But the son of the Cyprian goddess, adorned with feathers and armed with a quiver of arrows at his side, knew well how to

76 Comptes amoureux escharpe son carquois y sceut assez bien entrer et sortir à son vouloir par l’une des fenestres qui regardoit sus l’entrée des ponts. Or dens Tholose pour lors se tenoit ung jeune gentilhommes messire Jean Andro Lyonnais beau et jeune gentilhomme: duquel l’estude estoit du tout adonné aux armes, et à la Chasse, à tirer de tous bastons de traict, à piquer chevaulx, en laquelle chose tenoit une tant hardye dexterité, que mieulx n’eust sceu le grand empereur Alexandre qui seul osa chevaucher le merveuilleux Buciphal. Si advint que le puissant Andro ung jour estant allé chasser avecques une grosse bande de jeunes hommes ses compaignons, comme d’adventure le cenglier l’admena devant le chasteau de Pyralius. Ou ja estoit ar[8v]rivé le beau filz de Venus, et s’estoit posé droictement sus la maistresse Porte: auquel lieu par loisir contemploit la chasse attendant que la belle, ainsi que certes elle feit, survint à la fenestre. [woodcut] Or ouyés que feit Amour, promptement il enfonca son arc, et tira de son doré carquois deux traictz semblables, dont les poinctes, par la reflection du Soleil rendirent telle lueur qu’il fut advis aux habitans du lieu que la Forteresse fut fouldroiée: et d’iceulx il traversa les cueurs de la Dame, et du Chevallier, le fort Andro en l’heure luy qui soloit chasser et prendre les bestes saulvaiges, se trouva surprins de celluy, à la force duquel aulcun pouvoir n’est qui puisse resister. Il se plante la attentif comme s’arreste ung, qui en cheminant rencontre chose qui merite, qu’on retienne ses pas: il dresse l’œil au lieu, d’ou desja depend le tendre fil de sa vie: il contemple la grande beaulté de la Damoiselle, et quasi s’entroblie, et ne scait bonnement qu’il [9r] est ores devenu: La damoiselle d’ailleurs n’est en moindre peine, car elle devient vermeille comme la rose taincte du divin sang de Venus, puis change aultre couleur, elle souspire, et pleure et trop mauldit la jalouzie du debile vieillart. Rien plus ne souhaicte que de tenir son jeune amy entre ses bras. Apres se taisoit comme celluy qui en affaire urgent et pressé a mestier de prendre en soy bon et brief conseil, lequel ne succedant, ou il se contourne à implorer l’ayde des Dieux pouvans plus que les humains, ou bien execre la chose d’ou luy provient sa facherie. «Ahi,» disoit elle, «cruelle tour! Maison despite et tenebreuse, plaine

Tales and Trials of Love 77 come and go at his leisure through one of the windows overlooking the entrance to the bridges. Now, in Toulouse at the time, there lived a handsome, young gentleman, Master Jean Andro of Lyon,24 who was actively studying arms, hunting, archery, and riding, at which he had such great dexterity that not even Alexander the Great (the only one who dared to ride his horse Bucephelas) could have done better.25 And so it happened one day that valiant, young Andro went hunting with a large group of his fellow peers, and the boar that they were hunting led them by chance to Pyralius’s castle. Venus’s handsome son [8v] had only just arrived and had lighted right in the middle of the main gate. From his perch, he was leisurely watching the hunt when the young lady came to the window (as she was wont to do). Now listen, my friends, to what Cupid did: he promptly drew his bow and pulled two identical arrows from his golden quiver, whose points gleamed so brilliantly in the sunlight that the local inhabitants thought that the fortress was being struck by lightning. With these arrows Cupid pierced the hearts of the lady and the knight. At the time, valiant Andro was rather accustomed to hunting and killing savage beasts and was taken aback by the arrow’s unyielding force. He stood there attentively, just as one taking a walk might pause to contemplate a point of interest. The precious object that had caught his eye had already become his life’s obsession. As he contemplated the great beauty of the young lady before him, he quite forgot himself and grew [9r]26 completely disoriented. The young lady’s discomfort was no less significant, for she grew as scarlet as a rose stained by Venus’s sacred blood, then her complexion changed colors yet again. She sighed, and she cried, and she cursed her feeble old husband’s jealous temperament. She wished nothing more than to hold her young knight in her arms. Then, she grew quiet, just as one dealing with an urgent, pressing matter takes it upon himself to make the right decision, then, incapable of making that decision, either turns to implore the aid of the gods (who are more powerful than humans), or curses the very thing that caused his troubles. “Oh,” she said, “curse this horrible tower! What a spiteful house of darkness this is, full of grief and languor! The dark shadows of Hell would deem this place a worthy dwelling. These painful quarters imprison me and unjustly hide my beauty only to please a cursed and jealous old man. The gracious gods gave me this gift and

78 Comptes amoureux de dueil et de langueur! Manoir digne certes ouquel habitassent les umbres Plutoniques: hebergement doloureux: quand tu enserres et caiches sans prouffit la beaulté que les benignes destinées m’avoient baillée pour consumer en meilleurs usaiges, et cela seullement tu fais affin de complaire à ung mauldit et jaloux vieillart. Vrayement tout le monde debvroit avoir envie de ta ruyne. Si ne scay bonnement comme le ciel est si patient envers toy qu’il ne t’abisme et fouldroie comme on recite que jadis furent les cinq cités de Pentapolis.» Ce disant, à la belle les lhermes pluvoient des yeulx en si grande abundance, qu’on estime que les pleurs de l’amoureuse Biblis furent beaucoup moindres: ne Venus tant ne fut doloureuse en la mort de son Adonis. Et quand par l’embrunissement de la nuict qui avoit le visaige couvert de son noir manteau, elle eust perdu la [9v] veuë de son cher amy, dolente se retira en sa chambre infecunde, sterile: là ou Himeneus ne peult oncques allumer les tortis nuptiaux: ainsy estoit tousjours facheuz sans bon augur, ou apparence belle: faisant le plus grand dueil du monde ressembloit à l’infelice Dido, lors que son Eneas delaissa elle et sa cité de Carthaige. D’aultre cousté messire Andro fut contrainct de se retirer avec ses compaignons: Mais non sans avoir premierement advisé si par quelque moyen il pourroit entrer leans. Il ne peult oncques soupper car continuellement luy discouroit par la memoire la belle Dame veuë: et celle doulce souvenance luy servoit assez de nourriture, non aultrement que les malades la fiebvre nourrit et substante en partie. Las moy, disoit il en souspirant d’ung cœur plain de chaulx desirs, « Que je ne puis pervenir à l’amour de celle que ce vieillart sans chaleur au gros dommaige d’aultruy possede! Certes ma vie est neant d’aultant que je ne puis attaindre à ung tel si heureux bien. Hé que ne me puis je transmuer comme faisoit Juppiter, ou en oiseau, ou en pluye d’or, ou en taureau! Tost j’aurois mes desirs accomplis: et si suis certain que la belle m’aymeroit plus voluntiers que ce mauldit vieillart. O belles les conjunctions mondaines! O louables nopces! Mais ne sont pas vraiment cruelz les pere et mere de la belle? Que ne l’ont ilz plus tost à sa naissance estaincte? Que ne la sa mere cruellement avortée avant que la donner en telle servitude de mary scabieux, caduc, et que je croy estre la mes-[10r]me mort, tant est il plain de vieillesse et chargé d’ans. O saincte Venus sont ainsi ignorées à present des hommes avaricieux tes puissances secrettes? O sainct Amour pensent ilz que tes jeunes subjectes gardent incorrompues telles anciennes, debilles, et

Tales and Trials of Love 79 intended that I use it for better purposes. I dare say that the whole world should seek this castle’s demise. I cannot fathom why the sun is so patient toward it that it does not damage it and strike it as they say it once happened to the five cities of Pentapolis.”27 As she spoke, a profusion of tears streamed down the lovely girl’s cheeks. Byblis’s fountain of sorrows28 was no more profound, nor was Venus’s sadness on the death of her beloved Adonis.29 And when the black cloak of night had covered her face, [9v] obscuring the sight of her dear knight, she retired in sorrow to her infertile, sterile bedchamber, a place Hymenaeus never was to grace with his nuptial garland and torch.30 Her sorrow left her constantly vexed; her beauty faded; never had the world witnessed such doleful mourning. She was as Dido—abandoned and grief-stricken—when Aeneas left her and the city of Carthage.31 On the other side of the castle wall, Sir Andro was compelled to withdraw with his companions, but not without first determining if, by some means, he could enter within. He was hardly able to eat, as the memory of the beautiful young lady he had seen passed continuously through his mind. This sweet remembrance served as his sustenance, much as a fever seems to sate and sustain the sick. “Woe is me!” he said, his heart burning with desire, “I cannot obtain her love as long as that cold, old man possesses her! He knows not how he deprives others! My life truly is empty as long as I cannot attain this great gift. Oh, why can I not transform myself as did Jupiter? Into a bird, a golden rain, or a ram!32 Then, I quickly would accomplish my heart’s desire, and I am certain that the lovely lady would love me more willingly than that old man. Oh, how beautiful are the ties that bind! Oh, how praiseworthy is marriage! So cruel are this lovely lady’s mother and father! Why did they not extinguish her at her birth? Why did her mother not viciously abort her rather than handing her over into the bondage of a scabby, deaf husband, (whom I believe to be as good as dead [10r], so burdened is he by old age)? Oh, holy Venus, do the greedy truly disregard your mysterious powers in this way? Oh, holy Cupid, do they honestly think that your youthful subjects can refrain from defiling the marital bed when it is as old, debilitated, and sterile as this? I witness this misdeed: fearful fauns are bound unjustly to fierce bloodhounds; gryphons are joined with mares, which must forever hold their peace.”33

80 Comptes amoureux sterilles couches? Je le veoy. Desormais seront joinctes les craintifves biches avec les chiens limiers, et les gryphons auront paix avec les jumens et chevaulx.» Tant se multiplierent au jeune Andro les amoureuses passions, qu’il en estoit presque forcené et sans meilleur conseil. Mais Amour le debonnaire Dieu en eust commiseration: si delibera donner tresprompt secours aux deux Amans. Dont va tost prendre la semblance d’une damoiselle (les Dieux se transmuent en quelconque espece qu’ilz veullent) messagere en tel ordre qu’estoient anciennement les damoiselles messagieres allans par le royaume de Logres, montée sus ung paisible et bien allant Palleffroy richement enharnaché de veloux bleu semé de menues pensées d’or par dessus. Si vint trouver le jeune Andro en son hostel, et le salua prolixement de par sa dame Rosemonde. «O sieur Andro vaillant et amoureux chevallier,» dit Amour, «madame qui est tant esprinse de vous que plus ne peult souffrir, m’envoye icy, et vous mande que si on n’a pitié briefvement de son infortune, qu’elle sa vie assez prochainement en douleur et angoisse finira.» [woodcut] [10v] Tous gentils hommes chevalliers doibvent soubstenir les Damoiselles, et ayder de tout leur pouvoir si que bien peu courtois et preudhomme se peult clamer, qui aux damoiselles secourir est paresseux. Les anciens chevalliers du Roy Artus mettoient leur vie en abandon pour l’amour de leurs belles Amyes: dont ilz ont apres merité los eternel. Mais en quelle entreprinse et doubteuse adventure plaine de perilz n’entrerent messire Lancelot, Gaulvain, Tristan, Meliadus, Saigremors, Carados, le bon chevallier sans paour, et aultres infinis tous chevalliers de la table ronde? Et Paris Alexandre ne passa il pas la mer jusques en Grece? Et avant qu’il rendit la fille de Tindaris ne voulut il souffrir l’exillement de son pays? La mort de son anticque pere? De tous ses freres et parens? Pyritous se transporta jusques aux Enfers pour son amye ravoir, que si les cruelles destinées luy furent si contraires, il souffit qu’il se gecta aumoins en l’essay, et qu’il postposa sa propre vie à la bonne amour, qu’il portoit à sa Dame. [11r] «Or vous n’avez, sieur Andro, affaire au cruel roy Pluto que vous l’entendés: ains à ung debille et ja non plus hommes vieillart: Et celles ses estroictes barrieres et forteresse ne retarderont vos forts et puissans assaulx.» La raison, vous avez Amour de vostre cousté et ayde: contre lequel aulcune Rocque ne peult longuement durer.

Tales and Trials of Love 81 Inspired by his love, young Andro’s passionate rant grew ever more heated, to the point that he was nearly frantic and irrational. But Cupid, in all his elegance, felt compassion for him and decided to rescue the two lovebirds without delay. He then quickly took on the appearance of a young lady messenger, for gods can transform themselves into whatsoever they wish. Mounted on a gentle easy-riding palfrey that was richly harnessed with blue velour and covered with little, golden pansies, he resembled the young lady messengers who once went about the kingdom of Logres.34 And so he went to find young Andro in his lodging and greeted him at length on behalf of her Lady Rosemonde. “Oh, Sir Andro, valiant knight in love,” said Cupid, “Milady is so taken by you that she can endure no more. She sends me to you and asks that you take pity on her misfortune so that she may quickly end her pain and agony.” [10v] All gentlemen knights must abide the ladies and help with all their might if an uncourtly and insincere man (that is one slow to come to a lady’s aid) happens to stake his claim. The ancient knights of King Arthur would dismiss their own safety for love of a beautiful, beloved lady, which later garnered them ceaseless praise. But did not Sir Lancelot, Gawain, Tristan, Meliador, Saigremor, Carados, the young fearless knight, and many other Knights of the Round Table, enter into troublesome undertakings and perilous adventures, the result of which was uncertain?35 And Paris Alexander, did he not cross the sea into Greece? And before he returned the daughter of Tyndareus, did he not suffer exile from his country? And the death of his elderly father? And of all of his brothers and relatives?36 Pirithous travelled to the Underworld in order to abduct the woman he wished to marry. Although his wish may have been contrary to cruel destiny’s desire, he wanted at least to make an attempt, and he placed his love for a woman before his own life.37 [11r] “Now, Sir Andro, you are not dealing with the cruel king 38 Pluto, about whom you have heard, but rather with a feeble and elderly skeleton of a man. His narrow barriers and fortresses will scarcely hinder your strong and powerful assault. The reason for this is that you have Cupid on your side ready to assist you, and nothing can resist him for long.” Having said this, Cupid exhaled his breath imperceptibly onto the face of the knight Andro, and then he so increased his courage that he felt as though he already had conquered the enemy castle and kissed his beloved with all his heart’s desire. And so he thanked Cupid (whom he

82 Comptes amoureux Ce disant Amour halena invisiblement sur la face du Chevalier Andro: et lors luy accreust tant le couraige, qu’il luy sembloit proprement advis, que desja il avoit le Chasteau ennemy conquis, et qu’il baisoit à plain desir sa belle ayme. Si mercia Amour, qu’il pensoit estre une Damoiselle, mille fois de la peine prinse, et des bonnes nouvelles, et luy bailla ung riche diamant qu’il tira de son doigt, pour porter à sa dame, priant le recommander tres affectueusement à sa bonne grace, et luy dire qu’il estoit son humble chevalier qu’elle se soustint de bonne esperance, et qu’en brief elle seroit delivrée. [woodcut] Ce dict, Amour sans plus là s’arrester, despart, et feit tant qu’il pervint en la presence de la Da-[11v]moiselle Rosemonde: laquelle il trouva lors en sa garderobbe, ou à genoulx deprioit la Déesse Venus la vouloir regarder en pitié, et la bien tost delivrer des mains de son jaloux mary. Adoncques fut la Dame toute esperdue, parce que Amour gecta grande lueur par tout le lieu, qui luy esbloït les yeulx. Et à chef de piece se reasseurant attendoit encor que aultruy reasseura son ame crainctive de la paour receuë. «Rosemonde,» dit il, «madame Venus ma mere, et moy qui suis le puissant Dieu d’amours, prenons pitié de tes langueures: et tes sacrifices ont esté de nous agreablement receuz, or mects fin à ton pleurer: car de brief auras la jouyssance de ton amy Andro, et ton villain mary sera puny selon ses desertes et merites.» Telle fut adonc la joye et liesse de la jeune dame, qu’est d’ung pauvre criminel, qui pour l’ennuy et fascherie de la prison les gros fers aux piedz s’endort: et dormant songe qu’il est mis à plaine delivrance. Il se resjouyt oultre mesure, et desja sentant la doulceur de liberté se transporte librément es lieux pour la prison inconcedés, rid en son cueur, se plaist, et faict feste de sa delivrance à ses plus privés amys non pouvant encor assez expliquer par gestes exterieurs l’extreme liesse qu’il sent. Mais son bel amy Andro plain de je ne scay qu’elle aultre grande liesse qu’on ne peult assez exprimer, apres la despartie D’amour, duquel il nourrissoit l’ardent flambeau es moelles de ses os, delibera promptement se mettre en l’essay de la conqueste du Chastel jaloux. De faict il escript unes let[12r]tres à Pyralius, par lesquelles luy mande qu’il vouloit conquerir le damoiselle: et que pas ne luy appertenoit de l’avoir, veuë la raison de ses anticques et invalides ans. Icelles lettres escriptes, il appelle un sien Naing, et luy baille pour porterà Pyralius.

Tales and Trials of Love 83 thought to be a lady) a thousand times over for the pains she (he) had taken, and for the good news, and he gave her (him) an opulent diamond (which he had removed from his own finger) to give to his beloved, begging Cupid to recommend him most affectionately to her good graces and to tell her that he would be her humble knight if she would hold on to the hope that she soon would be rescued. This said, Cupid lingered no longer and left in order to come forward to the Lady [11v] Rosemonde. He found her in her apartment, where she was on her knees praying that the goddess Venus would take pity on her and quickly deliver her from her jealous husband’s grasp. And then the lady was completely amazed because Cupid illumined the room with a great, bewildering brightness. And trying at length to reassure herself, she waited in earnest for someone else to calm her fearful soul. “Rosemonde,” he said, “Madame Venus (my mother) and I (who am the powerful god of love) take pity on your suffering, and your sacrifices have been duly noted. So, cease your tears, for you soon will have your beloved Andro, and your wicked husband will be punished according to his just deserts.” The young lady’s resultant joy and mirth might be best described as that of a poor, accused prisoner, who, his captivity vexing and troubling him and with irons weighing down his feet, falls asleep and dreams of being fully exonerated. Overjoyed and already feeling the sweetness of liberty, his dreams carry him to places once forbidden to him; he laughs in his heart, delights in his good fortune, and celebrates his deliverance with his closest friends, though unable to express in clear terms the extreme lightness of heart that he feels. But Rosemonde’s handsome beloved Andro was full of a different (and oddly inexpressible) glee. After Cupid left (and indeed, the warmth of his affection for Cupid nourished him down to the very marrow of his bones), he decided at once to attempt an assault and conquest of the Jealous Castle. In good earnest, Andro wrote a letter [12r] to Pyralius, in which he sent word that he wanted to win the lady and that it was not fitting that Pyralius have her, in light of his advanced age and infirmity. Having written the letter, he called his dwarf and bestowed it on him to carry it to Pyralius.39 The dwarf, so awestruck and disturbed by his master’s undertaking that he could scarcely prevent his tears from streaming down his face and dripping onto the ground, determinedly set off for the Jealous

84 Comptes amoureux Dont le Naing esmerveillé et mary de l’entreprinse de son maistre, ne peult contenir les lhermes qu’elles ne luy coullassent du long de la face jusques à terre, au fort se meit il en voye vers le chasteau Jaloux: et entendu par ceulx de leans qu’il estoit messager, on luy feit avaler les ponts: et ainsi passa oultre avec moindre danger. Car le Gean enferma le Lyon, et le dragon chascun en sa caverne. [woodcut] Mais Pyralius les lettres de Andro leuës, ne se monstra dissemblable de Phineus temeraire turbateur de nopces de Perseo: car ung instant ce peu de couleur qu’il avoit, luy cheust de la face qui demeura pasle commme buys. Il esbranla trois et quatre foys la teste par maltalent, dont la forteresse trembla de ses fondemens jusques à la cime, comme [12v] quand le souverain des hommes et des Dieux esmeut en son courroux tout l’Olimpe: et si commença à ronger et à mordre ung gros baston de chesne duquel il s’appuyoit: on l’eust ouy fremir et bruyre de deux lieus loing, ainsi que la fureur de la mair par la cruelle et horrible raige des furieux vents troublée est du pasteur assis sus une haulte roche entendue. Si eust le pauvre Naing telle paour que bien peu s’en faillit qu’il ne mourut illec, en fin le meschant Jaloux gectant ung soubzris Sardonique, dit à sa femme: M’amye, ce fol chevalier me mande qu’il vous veult avoir: et par ce que demain je luy face ouvrir mon Chastel. Vrayement je luy feray faire l’ouverture qu’il demande: mais si par dessus les ponts il veult passer, se ne sera si aisement qu’il pense. La dame respondit «certes monseigneur, cest Andro ne sera tant oultrecuidé comme de s’exposer en si apparent danger.» Puis bassement en son cœur va prier la grande Venus qu’elle vueille estre en ayde à son cher amy. Le Naing retourna devers son maistre: et luy dit que Pyralius feroit voirement avaler les trois ponts. Puis adjousta: «Las, Sire, qu’avez vous emprins de faire? Voulez vous ainsi pour une femme vous perdre irreparablement? En yssant du Chastel Jaloux j’ay advisé la facon d’icelluy: contemplé la fureur du Lyon, et veu la craulté du serpent, qui est beaucoup, à mon advis, plus horrible, qu’on ne recite avoir esté de celluy sur lequel entreprint Jason la conqueste de la Toison d’or en l’isle de Colchos: ne que de l’aultre que [13r] le vaillant Perseo occit pour en deliver la fusque Andromeda. «Quand les ponts seront avallés, il vous fauldra contre trois pestes deffendre d’ung cœur plus que d’homme. Que si ainsi est que

Tales and Trials of Love 85 Castle. When he made it known to those within that he was a messenger, they raised the bridges for him and allowed him to cross without placing him in the slightest danger, for the giant had closed up both the lion and the dragon in their caves. But when Pyralius had read Andro’s letter, his reaction called to mind that of Phineus, who foolishly tried to prevent Perseus’s marriage, for in an instant, the little bit of color he had in his cheeks drained from his face until he was as white as a sheet.40 He shook his head angrily three or four times, causing the fortress to shake from its foundation to the rafters (just as [12v] when the sovereign of all men and gods made the extent of his wrath known to all of Olympus),41 and then he began to gnaw and to chew on a large oak cane on which he was leaning. One could have heard him quaking and moaning from two miles away, just as the fury of the sea troubled by the cruel and horrible rage of fierce winds can be heard by a shepherd perched high up on a rock. The poor dwarf was unquestionably so afraid that he very nearly died right then and there. Finally, the villainous, jealous man said to his wife with a forced smile, “My love, this mad knight sends word to me that he desires you and that tomorrow I am to open up my castle. I will not fail to open it as he wishes, but if he hopes to cross the bridges, it will not be as easy as he thinks.” The lady responded, “Certainly, sir, this Andro would not dare expose himself to such apparent danger.” Then, she prayed quietly to herself that the great Venus kindly would come to the aid of her dearly beloved. The dwarf returned to his master and told him that Pyralius would indeed lower the three bridges. Then, he added: “Alas, Sire, what are you undertaking? Do you want the lady to lose you irreparably? While leaving the Jealous Castle, I contemplated the following method, considering the fury of the lion, and bearing in mind the cruelty of the serpent, which is great (in my opinion, more horrible than the dragon Jason fought during his quest for the Golden Fleece on the island of Colchis, or even than the one that [13r] Perseus killed in order to save the swarthy Andromeda).42 “When the three bridges are lowered, you will have to defend yourself against three beasts, each more courageous than any man. If it so happens that you are able to surmount these Pyralian defenses, and if Venus and Cupid are able to help you safely reach the castle, you will have done nothing yet, for you will have to protect yourself from the treachery and ambush of the same Pyralius, your mortal enemy, who is fully the

86 Comptes amoureux toutes les deffenses Pyraliennes puissies surmonter, et si Venus et Amour vous sont si secourables que sain de vostre personne puissies au Chastel aller, ce ne sera riens faict encores: car il vous conviendra garder des trahisons et aguaits dudit Pyralius vostre mortel ennemy, qui est bien le plus desloial homme du monde, il vous fera par semblant bonne chiere, mais s’il pœult aulcunement seres de luy bien tost occis et meurdri. Puis fera diviser vostre corps en trois parties: dont l’une seras pour le repas du Gean, l’aultre sera gettée au Lyon, et la tierce au serpent. Pour Dieu, sire, retirez vous de ceste dangereuse entreprinse. «Asses d’aultres remonstrances feit ne Naing à son maistre Andro: mais ce fut pour neant. Car tant estoit il feru de l’amour de la Dame que pour estre desmembré, ne se fut desparty de son propos. Parquoy sans plus arrester armé de toutes pieces se meit en chemin vers le Chastel Jaloux en la compaignie sans plus de son dit naing, devisant de plusieurs choses: mesmement de la beaulté et bonne grace de la Damoiselle aymée. Or quand ilz furent pervenuz à ung gect du Chasteau Jaloux, le prœux Andro descendit de cheval pour adviser s’il luy failloit riens en son arnois, et voicy à travers ung petit bosquet apparoistre la grande Venus (les immortelz sou[13v]vent s’apparoissent aux humains) montée superbement sus ung chariot tresriche et bien ordonné, et celluy avoit elle eu en don de Vulcan son mary le jour qu’ilz furent espousés ensembles: la richesse duquel estoit incomparable, les roes estoient faictes de pur argent mignonement ouvrées et taillées: dont les rays aultant rendoient grande lumiere alentour que ceulx de l’argentine Phœbe en l’obscurté de la nuict. Les ais, et le siege ou seoit la déesse, furent d’or fin D’arabie: ou estoient tout au tour des bords enchassez gros rubis, riches et precieux diamans, esmeraudes, saphis, perles orientalles grosses comme une noix, chrisolites, balais, escarboucles, et infinis aultres pierres de grant pris augmentans et embellissans l’aultre richesse des histoires amoureuses et esmerveillables œvres que faict Venus en nature: lesquelles histoires Pygmalion le subtil orfevre des Dieux avoit là diligemment taillées. Ledit chariot estoit souefment trayné par douze blancs cignes et aultant de colombelles aiant aultour du col chascune ung petit cercle d’or: ou estoient attaichés rubans de couleur bleuë: lesquelles colombes deux à deux s’alloient baisans si amoureusement que qui les veit luy fut force de s’eschauffer en amours. Et le beau Cupido en estoit le charretier tout au

Tales and Trials of Love 87 most disloyal man in the world. He will appear to welcome you heartily, but if he can manage, you will quickly be killed, murdered on the spot. Then, he will have your body divided into three pieces, of which one will feed the giant; another will be thrown to the lion, and the third, to the dragon. For the grace of God, Sire, do not take on this dangerous task.” The dwarf made quite a few other remonstrations to his master Andro, but to no avail. He was so completely smitten with love for his lady that even the threat of dismemberment would not deter him from his path. This is why, without further ado and armed with all his weaponry, he set off for the Jealous Castle in the company of none other than his dwarf, talking about this and that, even about the beauty and graciousness of the beloved lady. And so when they arrived within arm’s reach of the Jealous Castle, the valiant Andro dismounted his horse in order to determine if he needed reinforcement, and there he saw the great Venus appear across a thicket (immortals can often [13v] make themselves appear to humans), superbly mounted on a very rich and well-appointed chariot, which she had received as a gift from her husband Vulcan43 on the day they were married, the richness of which was beyond comparison. The wheels were made of pure silver intricately wrought and fashioned, and they cast rays of light into the darkness of night as brilliant as those of Phoebus Apollo. The sides and the seat where the goddess was sitting were made of fine, Arabian gold, encrusted with large rubies, opulent and precious diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, oriental pearls as large as walnuts, golden jasper, garnets, carbuncles, and an infinite variety of valuable, precious stones that illustrated and represented another type of richness: tales of love and of the marvelous works with which Venus adorns the world. Pygmalion, the subtle silversmith of the gods, had meticulously fashioned these decorations.44 Twelve swans and an equal number of young doves gently drew the chariot, each wearing a small, golden collar adorned with blue ribbons. The doves proceeded two by two, kissing so sweetly that the image kindled a flame of passion within anyone who saw them. And the handsome Cupid, mounted in front, was driving the chariot, all the while lancing his fierce arrows at whomsoever he happened to meet, at some here to make them love one another, at others there to make them hate and flee from love, as does a fearful, simple lamb, [14r] who cannot help but flee the cruelty of the wolf. The three Graces paraded around Venus,

88 Comptes amoureux devant monté sus le tymon: ce pendant à travers le cœur de quiconque il rencontroit, descochoit ses violentes sagettes: à ceulx icy pour les faire aymer, et à ceulx là pour leur faire haïr et fuir l’amour, comme la bre-[14r]bis craintifve et simple fuyt de nature la cruaulté du loup. Aultour de Venus cheminoient s’entretenans par les mains ses trois Graces toutes nuës dont la blancheur de leur tendre et delicate chaire surpassante la candeur des fleurs des serisiers recens, faisoit monstrer la clairté du jour pasle et cendrée. Elles avoient leurs cheveux tressez à l’antique en derriere bien mignonement. Mais la grande Venus seant au chariot aiant de couste elle sa delicieuse fille Volupté, remplissoit l’air à l’environ d’une celeste et lumineuse clairté, si que l’œil humain assez à plain ne la pouvoit veoir ne contempler. Et la vertu de sa puissance faisoit là ou elle passoit germer et produire la terre diverses especes d’herbes et fleurs: et les animaulx soubdain se congnoissoient empraincts de nouvelle semence: et sus les arbres les petits oisillons vacquoient par celle mesme vertu à engendrer et pondre leurs semblables, brief au passer de la Déesse la region alors fut inacoustumément plus fecunde et belle. Apres le chariot suyvoit ung jeune homme sans barbe, en sa contenance prœux et hardy, aiant sus ses cheveux plus blonds et reluisans que n’est l’or de Chippre, ung bacinet d’acier à l’antique, sus lequel estoit posée une verte lezarde entre petits arbrisseaux de lauriers: et avoit endoussé une cuyrasse du cuir d’ung horrible serpent nommé Phyton, laquelle cuirasse fut paincte par dessus de l’histoire de la celebration des jœux Phytiens. Si tenoit en sa main gauche ung fort arc, en sa dextre une saget[14v]te: et en escharpe luy despendoit sa trousse dorée toutte plaine desdicte sagettes: ses cothurnes ou Brodequins estoient à la mode Spartaique, les Bras nudz et accoustrez comme pour sagetter. Qui le veit l’acompara au beau Paris Alexandre, lors qu’il s’exercitoit es guerre Troyennes à l’encontre des Gregeois, ou quand il deffendit les pasteurs royaulx en la forest Ida. Suyvoit aussi le venerieu chariot ung homme qu’on eust bien dit à le voir en son marcher estre de hault pouvoir: tant pource qu’il estoit de grande procerité (car vous l’eussiez dit quasi tout semblable en aulteur à ung gros et viel chesne, ou à ung arbre de Navire telle que fut celle en quoy passerent la mair, les Argonaux au pais du roy Oenthes) que aussi qu’il demonstroit en son visaige barbu et herissé, je ne scay quelle austerité bellique. Son vestement fut de la

Tales and Trials of Love 89 holding hands, entirely nude, the whiteness of whose tender and delicate flesh surpassed even the brilliance of the recent cherry blossoms and caused the bright, sunny day to pale and shadow in comparison.45 They had their hair quaintly braided back in the old style, but the great Venus, seated in her chariot with her delicious daughter Voluptas by her side,46 was filling the air around her with a celestial and luminescent clarity, so that even the most fully dilated human eye could scarcely take in her full image for contemplation. And everywhere she went, her divine influence inspired all different types of plants and flowers to cover the ground with sprouts and blossoms. Animals suddenly found themselves heavy with new young and, due to the same divine influence, little birds lighted upon the trees, busily nesting and laying eggs. In other words, the mere presence of the goddess made the entire world around her unusually more fertile and beautiful.47 Behind her chariot followed a young, clean-shaven man looking valiant and courageous. He wore an iron helmet in the old style decorated with a green lizard among little saplings and laurel trees atop a head of hair that was blonder and more lustrous than the gold of Cyprus, and he donned a leather breastplate made of the skin of a horrible snake called Python, on which was painted a scene depicting the celebration of the Pythian festival.48 He also carried in his left hand a hefty bow and in his right, an arrow. [14v] From his shoulder hung his golden quiver full of these arrows. His buskins, or boots, were of the Spartan style; his bare arms ready to strike. All who saw him compared him to the handsome Paris Alexander when he was fighting in the Trojan War against the Greeks, or when he defended the royal shepherds on Mount Ida.49 Also following the venerable chariot50 was a man, whose stride gave the impression of someone of great importance, as much due to his great height (for one would have said that he was nearly as tall as a great, old oak tree, or a ship’s mast such as the one in which the Argonauts crossed the sea into the land of King Aeëtes)51 as for the fierce austerity suggested by his bearded, rugged mug. His clothing was made from the hide of a ferocious lion, including its full mane, and its head (still bearing its teeth) covered his head instead of a helmet.52 The front paws were wrapped around his neck and knotted so that they hung down over his stomach. Likewise, he had tied the back paws over both of his hips so that the hide served as his armor and protection, so sturdy that neither

90 Comptes amoureux peau d’ung terrible Lyon à tout la joube: dont les teste aiant encores les dens luy couvroit le chef en lieu de heaume: et les pattes de devant luy enlaceoient le col dependans nouées aval sus l’estomach, et pareillement les pattes dernieres avoit il nouëes par sus les deux hanches en telle sorte qu’il se trouvoit armée et couvert de celle peau, qui tant estoit dure, qu’il n’y avoit fer ny acier qui peult encrer dedans, la queuë luy alloit pendant entre les cuisses jusques à terre, au demourant il alloit tout nud, dont facillement se pouvoit veoir la force de ses gros membres veluz et plains de poil: et mesmement ses jambes et bracs scrupuleux de muscles [15r] et veynes. Il portoit a son col une massue qui pesoit environt dix quintaux: ou estoient encor fichés plusieurs clous fort acerez et poinctuz, de laquelle il eust peu fouldroier et abbatre la haultesse d’Olimpus. En tel equipaige que je vous dy, mes dames, veit venir le chevallier Andro la grande Venus: laquelle approchant le lieu ou il estoit se mect promptement à genoux, luy faict reverence et l’adore. Mais la debonnaire Déesse à coup descent de son chariot, et sus riches tappis la estendus se siet: et appelle Andro, luy declaire qu’elle n’est venue là à aultre fin, sinon pour luy ayder et secourir à conquerir sa belle amye. Si le commanda desarmer par ses trois Graces: lesquelles de leurs mains delicates et blanches, tost le devestirent, tant qu’il restat tout nud en piedz devant la Déesse. Mais ò beaulté de grandissime vertu et efficace!O pouvoir prest et soubdain pour en ce bas monde rendre toute personne, qui te possede à jamais heureuse!Certes pas n’a menty le divin Platon: quand il disoit que tu as, ò beaulté, plus de force en ung seul moment devant les yeulx des amoureux, que n’a pas la doulce Eloquence seulle de soy: laquelle ne peult guyeres, sinon possible en cent ans, proffiter envers qui ne veult ouyr les justes et raisonnables plainctes d’amours. O beaulté le seul et precieux don des haulx Dieux, en ung petit moment diray je seulle et sans peine tu peus attendrir le cœur d’acier!Et non aultrement que faisoit le Thracien Orpheus au doulx resonnement [15v] de son leut, attires à toy les insensibles rochers, arrestes les fleuves en leurs cours, enyvres le Lions, aprivoises les tygres, invites la Lune et le Soleil, et les oiseaux de l’air pour toy descendent, et te suyvent plains et arrestez de je ne scay quelle ta vertu secrette. Cecy je dy mes Compaignes, pourtant que la grande Venus (si d’aventure les Dieux se retrouvoient subjectz aux Passions, comme nous sumes) fut esté prinse en l’heure

Tales and Trials of Love 91 iron nor steel could penetrate it. The tail hung between his thighs down to the ground and moreover, he went completely nude so that one easily could see the strength of his great limbs, rough with hair, and especially his fear-invoking arms and legs, bulging with muscles [15r] and veins. He wore a club from his neck that weighed about ten quintals;53 several sharp nails forged from steel protruded from it, and it was capable of striking and toppling down heights as great as Mount Olympus. My ladies, the knight Andro then caught a glimpse of Venus arriving in the wake of this entourage that I just described. Upon witnessing her approach, he promptly knelt, offering an appropriate display of reverence and adoration.54 But Venus was so courteous that she got down from her chariot right away, sat upon a sumptuous rug stretched before her and beckoned Andro to her. She declared to him that she had come for no other purpose than to help and assist him in winning over his beautiful beloved. And she then ordered that her three Graces undress him. Their delicate, pale hands quickly removed his clothing, so that he stood completely naked before the goddess. My, what unparalleled Beauty he possessed—both virtuous and appealing! Oh, what Strength, capable of ensuring eternal happiness in an instant to whomsoever possesses it! Plato, in all his wisdom, said it best: when perceived by the eyes of those in love—even for a single moment—Beauty holds greater power than does sweet Eloquence alone, for when desire is absent, a hundred years hardly would suffice for the latter to sway the heart, regardless of the sincerity or insistence of a lover’s complaint.55 Oh, Beauty, the one and only precious gift of the gods on high, I dare say that you could singlehandedly—and without going to great pains—soften a heart of steel in but a moment! And, much as the Thracian Orpheus accomplished with the sweet sounds [15v] of his lute,56 you seduce the most insensitive stones; you stop rivers in their course; you inebriate lions; you tame tigers; you invite the Sun and the Moon and the birds in the sky to come down to you and to follow you, bursting and unyielding, influenced by that strange, secret virtue that you possess. My fellow ladies-in-love, I believe that the great Venus could very well at that moment have fallen in love with the knight herself and been compelled to force the Lady Rosemonde to live forever in misery in the Jealous Castle without her beloved, left to endure and suffer the importunity of that execrable man, Pyralius. Valiant Andro appeared so very

92 Comptes amoureux de l’amour du chevallier: et eust adonc este force à la Damoiselle Rosemonde d’eternellement vivre en misere et sans amy dedans le roch Jaloux, endurer et supporter la facherie du mauldit Pyralius. Car de tant grande beaulté et excellence de corps apparut aux Immortelz le prœux Andro, que alors Venus comme toutte esmerveillée, non aultrement que en l’ostention du chef de la Gorgonne le roy Achrisius fut mué en marbre tresdur, elle demeura sans soy mouvoir. Ce neantmoins en fin revenue à soy, et voiant qu’il annuytoit tira d’ung petit coffret une boicte faicte d’une esmeraude: et de l’unguent en lava elle mesme tout le corps du Chevallier. Si sentoit bon l’ambrosie celeste, dequoy l’unguent fut composé. Puis cella fait le feit revestir et armer: et luy donna ung celeste et divin baiser, tel que fut imparty à celluy qui jadiz apres le cry qu’elle en feit, luy ramena son filz esgaré et perdu. Et prenant congé pria le beau Dieu Apollo, ensemble le Dieu Hercules, à sa requeste illec venuz en tel equipaiges que je vous ay dit, d’estre en aide à son Cheval[16r]lier: Ce qu’ilz luy promirent de faire. La Déesse s’evanoït avec son filz (si sembloit la fumée des encenciers: laquelle petit a petit voletant par les voustes des temples, se pert de la veuë des regardans) et addressa son chariot sur la muraille du Chastel, ou invisible se tint pour veoir l’assault des siens. Mais le prœux Andro en la compaignie du Dieu Apollo et de Hercules parvindrent au premier pont. Si commenca Hercules à escrier le Gean de toute sa force: lors resembla la voix de cent hommes de guerre, qui les prochains rochers et tout le Chastel faisoit retentir. Le mauldit Gean dormoit pour l’heure: si s’esveilla en sursault pensant que sa tour trebucha en abisme: Puis se rasseurant mect la teste à la fenestre et demande qui huchoit si fort. En ceste facon le chien Cerberus s’esmouvoit pour deffendre l’entrée du tenebreux Hostel de Pluton. Il commence d’esbranler et secourre la teste par maltalant, et escume ainsi que faict le cenglier assailly des chiens limiers, il grinse les dens, roille les yeulx en la teste, et faict la plus despiteuse chiere du monde. Quand il se leva debout resembla Briareo qui avoit cent bras, et cent mains menaceant le ciel: il avoit les dens demy pied hors de la gueulle. A brief dire, c’estoit le plus inhumain et despiteux monstre que la terre oncques crea. Dont mesmes feit il telle peur à Amour qui le contemploit de dessus la tour, que à peu ne s’envolla bien loing d’ilec.

Tales and Trials of Love 93 handsome and physically attractive to the immortals that Venus, just as amazed by him as was King Acrisius when the extravagant head of the Gorgon transformed him, stood completely still.57 And then, having returned to her senses, and seeing that he was growing weary, she pulled an emerald box containing an unguent out from a little chest and bathed the knight’s entire body with it.58 It smelled delicious, of the celestial ambrosia from which the unguent was made. Then, once she had completed the ritual, she dressed and armed the knight and gave him a heavenly and divine kiss, the kind that she had once given as recompense to the one who returned her lost son (he had gone astray, and she cried grievously in his absence). And, taking leave, she prayed to the handsome god Apollo and to the god Hercules59 (he had come there at her request to take part in the entourage that I told you about) that they might assist her [16r] knight, which they promised her that they would do. The goddess vanished with her son (this resembled the smoke that emanates from the censer, rising little by little up to the church’s vault until it becomes imperceptible) and directed her chariot over the castle wall, where she could observe the impending battle undetected. After that, valiant Andro, along with the god Apollo and Hercules, approached the first bridge. And then Hercules began to yell at the giant with all his might. The entire castle and mountains nearby rumbled, for his voice had the strength of a hundred men-at-war. The wicked giant had been sleeping for an hour when he awoke with a start, thinking that his tower was crashing down around him. Then, seeking reassurance, he stuck his head out of the window and inquired as to the source of the noise. This is precisely how the dog Cerberus reacted in order to defend the entrance of Pluto’s tenebrous lodging.60 He began to wag and shake his head angrily and to foam at the mouth as does a wild boar pursued by bloodhounds; he gnashed his teeth; his eyes rolled back in his head, and he made the most inhospitable commotion imaginable. When he stood upright, one would have taken him for Briareos, who menaced the heavens with his one hundred arms and one hundred hands.61 His teeth protruded a half-foot outside of his mouth. In other words, he was the most inhuman and nasty monster that had ever roamed the Earth. His appearance so frightened Cupid, who was contemplating him from above the tower, that he quickly flew far away.

94 Comptes amoureux «Ouvre, ouvre, meschant Pautonier,» disoit le hardy Andro, «car nous vou[16v]lons entrer au Chastel.» Le Gean qui entendit la voix du Chevallier a coup chargea une grosse et pesante massue: aussi prins ung dard esmoulu: et une chaine de fer de la longueur de sept piedz, ou au bout y avoit ung gros Boulet faict D’acier et creu, plain par enchantement de je ne scay quel feu infernal respirant dehors par petitz trous: et jamais ne s’estaignoit ou diminuoit: mais soudain s’attaichoit aux armes, ou aux vestements, ou à la chair. Ainsi convenoit brusler sans remede, à qui en estoit touché et feru: le pont baissé Andro courageux et hardy descent à pied et bailla au naing le coursier à tenir: puis passe oultre prenant songneusement garde de ne tumber aval dens les fossez, jusques a ce qu’il fut en une large place pres de la tour ou le Gean l’attendoit rugissant comme le Lyon, qui veoit approcher et tumber la proye en ses gryffes. Si se recommande le Chevallier devottement et de tout son cueur à madame Venus. Le mauldit monstre, qui avoit nom Caignazo, premierement saisit le dard, et urlant comme le loup au gros de l’hyver oppressé de famine, ou ainsi que le taureau qu’on sacrifie aux Dieux, et par l’erreur du coup s’echappe, et fuyt avec une grande fureur de la corne prosternant quiconques le tend d’arrester, le lance contre l’amoureux Chevallier: et l’eust de celluy coup rué par terre tout mort: mais la debonnaire Déesse, qui avoit entendu la priere de son loyal serviteur, prestement feit là devaller Amour, qui se meit entre deux, et de l’ung de ses traictz de[17r]stourna le mortel coup, et rompit le dard en deux pieces. Caignazo voiant qu’il a perdu son coup, prent sa massuë et la lieue contremont, puis l’avalle sus Andro d’une grand roideur. Adonc vous eussiez dit que ce fut fouldre qui tumba de rechief sur les Titans: ou le roollement d’ung gros chesne aval d’une montaigne, que le laboureur à grans, et frequens coups de coignée a abbatu. En danger estoit le Chevallier ne fut, que Amour gectz au devant du coup une de ses aësles, et destourna la massue, qui se rompit en pieces contre l’ung des coings de la tour. Ce veu, Caignazo qu’il ne pouvoit matter son adversaire sembloit bien en sa contenance Pluto lors que le fort Alcides le lyoit au plus tenebreux lieu de sa Cité d’enfer, si delibera qui brusleroit son ennemy, combien qu’il eust mieulx voulue en faire ung bon repas et le manger, Dont luy lancea il son boulet de feu en maniere de plombée contre l’estomach: et alors chose espoventable, s’espanchoit en l’air

Tales and Trials of Love 95 “Open up, open up, you despicable, lewd ogre,” said the courageous Andro, “for we wish [16v] to enter the castle.” The giant, who heard the knight’s voice, suddenly hoisted a stout, heavy club, a sharpened spear and a seven-foot-long iron chain, at the end of which was a hefty, hollow steel ball, full of a strange, magical, infernal fire that seeped out from tiny perforations. The fire was neither extinguishable, nor did it die down in the least, but rather it lashed wildly at their weapons, clothes, and flesh and relentlessly burned anyone whom it touched or struck. Once the bridge was lowered, Andro, full of courage and might, approached it on foot and gave his horse to his dwarf for safekeeping. Then, he crossed the bridge, taking care not to fall into the moat, until he came to a large clearing near the tower where the giant was roaring, as would a lion watching his prey approach and fall subject to his claws. And so, the knight prayed devotedly and wholeheartedly for Venus to protect him. The wicked monster (named Caignazo) first seized the spear and, howling as does a wolf oppressed by famine in the middle of winter, or as does a bull being sacrificed to the gods and by some misstep manages to escape and flee and strike down with his horns whoever attempts to stop him, in this manner hurled the spear at the lovesick knight and would have run him through with his blow, were it not for the lovely Venus. She had heard her loyal servant’s prayer and promptly sent Cupid there to intervene. He placed himself between the two and deterred [17r]62 the mortal blow with one of his arrows, breaking the spear in half. Caignazo, seeing that his blow had missed its mark, grabbed his club and hoisted it up, then let it fall fiercely on Andro. At that moment, one would have said that the attempt rivaled the thunderbolt that once struck the Titans, or the rolling of a great oak tree down a mountain that a lumberjack had felled with great, swift swings of an axe. As soon as the knight was in danger, Cupid had only to throw one of his wings before the blow and divert the club, which then ruptured into pieces against one of the corners of the tower. Seeing this, Caignazo, who was unable to subdue his adversary, seemed quite like Pluto when the powerful Alcides tied him up in the most sinister part of the Underworld.63 Then, he decided that he would burn his enemy, for he would have so liked to make a good meal of him. To that end, he flung his ball of fire, aiming for his gut and then, a terrible thing happened. Fire and smoke poured into the air just as in the forgery of the Sicilian Cyclopes where Vulcan hastened them to work.64

96 Comptes amoureux tel feu et fumée comme de la forge des Siciliens Cicloppes Vulcanus les hastant à l’œuvre, si eust este le Chevallier bruslé: Ne fut que, ainsi comme ung venin par l’aultre venin est estainct, le feu d’amours, qui estincelloit dens son corps, estaignoit celle infernalle chaleur joinct que pour le danger Amour halena si vertueusement, et eschauffa si fort le cueur du chevallier de nouveau en l’amour de la belle dame Rosemonde, qu’il appercevoit sus la porte du Chastel Jaloux en la compaignie de Pyralius son mary, qui bien luy sembloit ad[17v]vis que le peril ne luy pouvoit empescher son entreprinse. Parquoy prestement animé comme un lyon d’Hyrcanie tyra l’espée, et en ferit le Geant droit dessus l’espaule aupres du hasterel d’une telle force que l’espée fourbie y entra dedans plus de demy grant pied: et peu s’en faillit qu’il ne le tua. Et au retirer l’espée, luy soubsleva le chappeau d’acier, qui cheut es fossez. Andro le pressoit de tout sont pouvoir, comme faict le faulcon le corbeau qu’il luy a emblé sa proye: et le voiant en tel poinct, en est si joyeulx que riens plus: Car il scait bien qu’il en viendra assez au dessus. Hercules attentif à la bataille, le loue fort de prouesse: et l’accompare à son compaignon Theseus, lors qui se combattoit au Gean Cerberus pres de la Cité d’Enfer, pour recouvrer la fille de la Déesse des bledz. A celluy coup mugissoit Caignazo si horriblement, qu’il sembloit le Taureau vaincu d’ung aultre plus puissant, qui luy a ravy sa belle vache aymée. Il fatigue asses sa plombée ignivome pour en brusler son adversaire, mais le prœux Andro lavé de l’unguent celeste ne pouvoit aultre chaleur sentir, que celles D’amours. Enfin il recharge ung tel et si pesant coup sur la teste du Gean desarmée, qu’il le pourfendit jusques aux dens: et de ce coup le malheureux rendit son ame aux umbres Plutoniques. Son corps tumba dens les fossez, et feit tel bruyt au cheoir comme les enormes corps fouldroiez par Juppiter feirent au trebucher de la haultesse de Ossa grande montaigne, qu’ilz avoient mise sus le mont Pelion à l’assault du Ciel. Mort [18r] l’horrible Geant, marcherent Hercules, et Apollo vers le deuxisme pont, qui fut par celluy qui le gardoit, abbaissé. Donc Hercules se meit avant contre le cruel Lyon, qui s’en venoit courant à grans saulx la gueulle bée pour devorer et englotir ceulx qui venoient, mais le filz d’Alcmena n’aiant en rien perdu de sa force premiere, hardy et couraigeux le prent par la gorge, monte sus, et à force de mains l’eust asses tost occis. Après ce, s’en vindrent vers le troysiesme pont: qui

Tales and Trials of Love 97 The knight surely would have been burned had it not been for the fire of love that was burning inside his body and had begun anew to warm the knight’s heart with love for his Lady Rosemonde (whom he had glimpsed above the gate of the Jealous Castle beside her husband Pyralius), [17v] much as a poison often serves as the antidote to another poison. This fire made him believe that not even the present peril he faced could deter him from his task. Consequently, he promptly came to life as would a Hyrcanian lion,65 drew his sword and pierced straight into the giant’s shoulder in the crook near his throat with such force that the burnished sword penetrated over a half-foot and very nearly killed him. Then, he withdrew his sword and removed his steel helmet, which tumbled down into the moat. Andro laid into him with all his might, as does a falcon to a raven stealing his prey, and seeing him in this state, was so joyful that he could scarcely do anything else, for he knew that he would come out on top. Hercules, attentive of the battle, praised him at length for his prowess, comparing him to his comrade Theseus when he was fighting the giant Cerberus at the gates of Hell in order to rescue the daughter of the patron goddess of wheat.66 With this blow, Caignazo bellowed so horribly that he sounded like a bull beaten by another, stronger one that had stolen his beautiful, beloved cow. He quite wore out his lead flamethrower trying to burn his adversary, but the valiant Andro, bathed in the celestial unguent, could feel no other heat than the warmth provoked by love. Finally, he redoubled such a heavy blow to the giant’s bare head that it cleaved straight through to his teeth, and with this blow, the wretched giant yielded his soul to the Plutonic darkness. His body fell into the moat, generating a great racket as it tumbled down, much as did the enormous bodies destroyed by Jupiter as they fell down from the heights of the great Mount Ossa, on top of which they had placed Mount Pelion in order to ascend to the heavens.67 [18r] Once the horrible giant was dead, Hercules and Apollo proceeded to the second bridge, which had been lowered by its keeper. Then, Hercules advanced toward the lion, which was bounding toward him with an open mouth, ready to devour and swallow up his attacker. But Alcmena’s son,68 having lost none of his inherent force, boldly and courageously took the lion by the throat, mounted it, and with the brute strength of his hands, quickly killed it. After this, they proceeded to the third bridge, which likewise had been lowered, and when Apollo saw the

98 Comptes amoureux fut pareillement abbaissé, et quand Apollo veit le venimeux et cruel serpent, luy sembla avoir rencontré ung aultre Phyton. Car cestuy n’occupoit moindre distance de terre. Il avoit les deux pattes de devant en maniere de griffon grosses et massives, ses ongles estoient d’ung pied et demy de longueur, et les piedz de derriere plus cours ressembloient à ceulx d’ung lyon: sa queuë estoit grosse et longue de cinq brasses allant tousjours en agreslissant, deux grandes aësles non trop differentes à celles d’une chaulvesoris le portoient par tout en l’air, il avoit le museau long et gros, et grans dens comme ung Elephant: les yeulx larges et enflambez et fort enfoncez dens la teste, les oreilles petites, le cuyr en maniere d’escaille de poisson dur, et aceré. Apollo considerant la fierté de telle Bellue, se plante et enfonce son fort arc et tant descocha de flesches sus le serpent, que sa trousse en fut vuydée: et ainsi l’occit. Puis vindrent Andro et Hercules a la porte: et pource qu’on ne vouloit ouvrir si tost, Hercules rua ung tant desmesuré coup de sa massuë, qu’il la porta par terre avec plus d’une [18v] toise de la muraille. Si entrerent dedans jusques à la seconde porte. Parquoy voiant Pyralius qu’il ny avoit ordre de plus avant deffendre son Chastel, vint parler aux champions de dessus la muraille, et leur pria le vouloir prendre à mercy: et qu’il feroit ouvrir la porte. Mais Hercules n’en voulut riens faire. Si l’enfonca comme l’aultre avec tel bruyt et son, que faict l’esclattement d’une tour plaine de pouldre à canon, sur qui est cheuste la fouldre du ciel. Si s’en fuyt Pyralius par une faulse porte hors de leans pour saulver sa vie: et barra apres soy les huys non aultrement que Pluton en sa cité d’Enfer avoit faict aultresfois contre ledit Hercules, qui luy osta la dame Proserpine. Mais la belle dame Rosemonde plus joyeuse qu’on ne scauroit penser, ainsi qu’estoyent les matrones et pucelles Troiennes quand elles veirent le siege des Grecs levé de devant leur ville de Troye, s’en vint à coup au devant de son bel amy pour le bien venir et faire chere, belle comme une Déesse. Car aussi en son acoustrement fut tant riche et pompeuse, que c’est chose quasi incroiable à l’ouyr. Or le beau Soleil en celle saison par loisir, comme l’oiseau de la grande Juno lors qu’il faict la rouë de sa belle queuë par sus les aultres oiseaux se plaist et contente, s’amusoit à contempler sa propre beaulté, et le lustre de ses rayons: desquelz divinement est decoré son chef en maniere de coronne. Si sembloit en ce faisant qu’il reprint ses forces lassées entre les accolemens de son amye la femme du vieillart Oceanus: et

Tales and Trials of Love 99 venomous and cruel snake, he mistook it for another python, for this one was hardly any smaller.69 Its two front feet were like those of a gryphon, stout and massive. Its claws were a foot and a half long, and its shorter back feet resembled those of a lion.70 Its tail was stout, twenty-five feet long and tapered toward the end. Two great wings resembling those of a bat carried him through the air. He had a long and thick muzzle and teeth as big as an elephant’s; his large, bloodshot eyes were set back in his head, his ears were small, and his skin was scaly and as tough as a fish. Apollo, considering the fierceness of such a monster, steadied himself, drew back his powerful bow, and shot so many arrows at the snake that he emptied his quiver, finally killing it. Then, Andro and Hercules approached the gate and, because no one was too quick to open it, Hercules beat on it so outrageously with his club that it came crashing down, bringing over six feet [18v] of the wall with it. And then, they entered and approached the second gate. This is why Pyralius, seeing that he could no longer defend his castle, went out on top of the wall to speak to the conquerors. He entreated them to have mercy on him and stated that he would open the gate, but Hercules wanted none of this. He forced down the gate just as he had the other one, with such a great commotion and racket that it sounded as if a tower full of gunpowder had been struck by lightning and exploded. And then, Pyralius fled for his life through a trap door, barring the door after him just as Pluto had once done to Hercules in the Underworld when he had tried to take Lady Persephone from him.71 But the beautiful Lady Rosemonde, happier than one could imagine (just as the Trojan mothers and maidens were when they saw that the siege of the Greeks had been lifted from Troy), appeared before her handsome beloved in order to welcome him and celebrate. She looked as beautiful as a goddess, and her clothing also was so rich and sumptuous that it was something incredible to behold. And then the striking Sun adorned Rosemonde’s head with a crown of sunshine (during this time of year he tended to amuse himself by contemplating his own beauty and the brilliance of his rays, just as great Juno’s bird, who takes pride in and enjoys flaunting its beautiful tail before other birds).72 And it seemed that by so doing the Sun had regained his strength and that, as if weary of the daily duty of embracing his dear friend, the wife of elderly Oceanus, he was postponing their evening encounter.73 [19r] The love-struck Rosemonde was simply and suitably clothed in a dress made

100 Comptes amoureux qu’il differoit de l’aller re[19r]veoir. Parquoy l’amoureuse Rosemonde lors estoit simplement vestue d’une robbe faicte d’ung blanc taffetas armoisi, dont les bords estoient de passemans d’or, par dessoubs la deliée chemise joignoit à sa chair blanche et ferme: si que quand le doulx vent Zephirus venoit à entresoufler parmy ses habillemens ores il demonstroit à qui le vouloit veoir, la composition de la cuisse, ores du ventre, et ores de sa jambe longuette et bien faicte. Les cheveux d’elle blonds et espaix estoient richement tressez et cuilliz à lacs d’or traict à maniere de reths: dont les noudz furent de fines perles, saphirs, et verdes esmeraudes: oultre par dessus son chief elle portoit ung chappellet de fleurs sentans comme si ce fut basme: Que la faisoit ressmbler à une grande Reyne coronnée nouvellement, qui entre en la Chambre du Roy son espoux, et sa face estoit polide et necte plus que n’est le blanc yvoire songneusement mis en œuvre. Las ne fault demander si le jeune Amy fut plain de liesse, quand il apperceut le simple et reposé marcher de sa Dame, qui luy venoit au devant. Car qui luy eust donné ung riche et opulent royaume, telle joye au cueur ne luy eust peu survenir. Or à peine eust il entendu la premiere voix d’elle, et le doulx parler amoureux, dont au saluer l’ung l’aultre, elle usa: à peine luy eust il ung doulx, amoureux et prolixe baiser assis sur sa bouche coraline, Que voicy leur apparoir la grande Venus à chere joyeuse, et signifiant ne scay quelle prochainne bienheureté. Eulx la saluerent les genoux à terre [19v] decentement: ce pendant timides et plains de je ne scay quelle amoureuse honte, Au fort la Déesse les avoit asseurez par son humain parler, entrerent tous ensemble au Palais de joye et asseurance, ja non plus Pyralien: ou furent promptement levées les tables que les troys Graces chargerent des viandes à celle fois, dont les immortels ont de coustume d’user. [woodcut] On y feit grosse chiere tant pource que la damoiselle Rosemonde avoit la perfection de ses desirs: que aussi entre eulx arriva le bon Liberpater dieu certes plus que humain et pere de toute joye parfaicte, en la compaignie de la plantureuse Déesse Ceres Sicilienne. Iceulx avec leur aultre bande furent les mieulx que bien Venus, et de chascun joyeusement recueilliz. Les tables levées on danca quelque piece jusques à ce que les estoilles chéantes commencerent de les inviter au sommeil et repos nocturne. Dont la dame de Paphos soubdain feit

Tales and Trials of Love 101 of delicate, white silken taffeta,74 the seams of which were laced with gold and underneath, a thin slip glided along her firm, white flesh so that when Zephyrus’s gentle breeze rustled her clothing,75 it then revealed to him who wished to see, the composition of her thigh, and then her stomach, and then her long, well-formed leg. Her blond, thick hair was richly braided and gathered into golden tresses pulled back by a netting interwoven with pearls, sapphires, and green emeralds and in addition, she wore a garland of flowers on her head that smelled of balm (this gave her the appearance of a newly crowned queen entering the chamber of her husband the king), and her face was as bright and perfect as the most carefully crafted white ivory. Alas, one need not wonder whether the young lovesick lad was overcome with joy when he saw the effortless and discreet demeanor of his lady walking toward him. And even if someone were to have given him a rich and opulent kingdom, such lightness of heart hardly would have befallen him. He had barely heard her first utterance and her sweet love talk, which she used to preserve their intimacy, and had only just placed a gentle, loving, and lavish kiss on her coralline lips, when Venus appeared to them with a joyful countenance, presaging a future as happy as one could imagine. They praised her, kneeling [19v] graciously, though timidly, and their love provoked in them an unusual awkwardness. Despite this, the goddess assured them through her human speech that they might enter the palace together joyfully and in good faith, for it was no longer occupied by Pyralius. Inside, tables promptly were put into place, which the three Graces filled for the occasion with delicacies typically reserved solely for the immortals. Everyone celebrated light-heartedly, as much so because the Lady Rosemonde had achieved her heart’s desire, as due to the fact that dear old Liber Pater, a truly immortal god and the father of all perfect happiness, had arrived to join them in the company of the bountiful Sicilian goddess Ceres.76 They, and all of their entourage, were joyfully received, to the best of Venus’s and everyone else’s ability. The tables raised, everyone danced a few rounds until the falling stars began to invite them to sleep and nocturnal rest. Then, the Lady of Paphos swiftly had the three Graces make up a nuptial bed with a quilt stuffed with the down of swans and lovebirds, and since the lovers were under the protection [20r] and safekeeping of Venus, they hung curtains made of crimson velour

102 Comptes amoureux dresser une couche nuptialle par ces troys Graces: de laquelle la coicte fut du douët des Cignes et pingeons oiseaux amoureux, et estans en la tu[20r]telle et garde de la Déesse, les courtines furent d’ung veloux cramoisi faictes en broderie, ou y avoit figurés force myrthes, qui sont arbres dediez à Venus: les pendans et rideaux estoient d’ung fin taffetas de coleur celeste tout semé par dessus et dedans d’estoilles d’or, le ciel du lict fut de telle estoufe, et brodé de la main propre de la pucelle Arachnes de plusieurs et diverses histoires: mesmement s’y voioit la grande Venus à visaige indigné contre les descenduz du Soleil. A l’ung des costez la pauvre Pasiphée espouse du roy de Crete par boys espaix et larges champaignes par tout suit la trasse, et pas du Taureau aymé. Et à elle prochaine se voioit l’infelice Ariadne de son desloyal amant laissée: apres apparoissoit la dolente Phedra, qui dens son estude à la lumiere d’une lampe en la silente nuyct escript ses amoureuses et persuasives lettres au filz de son mary Theseus: aussi là estoit depaincte la naissance, les amours, et trespas immature de l’enfant Adonis, si au vif, que Venus ne peult tant faire, comme de se contenir d’en souspirer encores profondement. Le chalict estoit tout d’or massif richement ouvré de plusieurs histoires des amoureuses entreprinses de Juppiter, et du debat qu’eust Cupido avec Apollo apres la mort du serpent Phyton, pour laquelle mort ledit Apollo trop se vantoit. Au reste la chambre estoit richement tapissée, telle qu’estoit la chambre ou au retour de Grece fut receuë la fille de Leda par son nouveau espoux. [20v] [woodcut] Apres Vulcanus feit allumer ung gros feu, et Apitius le delicat leur prepara une collation de confitures delicieuses en diversité: si qu’on en eust peu estimer la despence à douze cens escuz. Quand le tout fut deuëment et à diligence preparé la grande Venus à face riante et gracieuse, d’où elle serenoit le Ciel, print par les mains l’heureux Andro et la belle son amye, et les mena en celle riche chambre: ou elle par ses troys Graces les feit coucher. Ce faict, chascun d’eulx se despartit. Mais avant ce, la bonne Déesse leur infundit à tous deux dens les moelles et veines sa celeste et tepide influence. Adoncques les deux Amants plus joyeulx qu’on ne scauroit dire, furent une piece sans pouvoir dire ung tout seul mot: comme celluy qui tant se remplit de joye au retour insperé de son amy, qu’il en pert la force de parler: seullement luy gecte les bras au col, et doulcement l’embrasse lhermoiant

Tales and Trials of Love 103 embroidered with images of myrtles, the tree dedicated to Venus. The pendants and drapes were made of a fine taffeta in a heavenly color, adorned on the inside and out with golden stars, and the ceiling of the bed was upholstered with the same material and hand-embroidered with many diverse stories by none other than the maiden Arachne, even though Venus held her in disdain for depicting the loves and transgressions of the gods.77 On one side, poor Pasiphaë, wife of the king of Crete, follows the path and footprints of her beloved bull through thick woods and vast countryside.78 And after her, there was unhappy Ariadne, abandoned by her disloyal lover; then appeared dolorous Phaedre, who, studying by the light of a lamp in the quiet of the night, wrote persuasive love letters to the son of her husband Theseus;79 also there was depicted the birth, the loves, and the untimely death of Adonis, all so lifelike that Venus was scarcely able to conceal a wistful sigh.80 The massive bedstead was entirely covered in gold leaf and richly carved with several stories of Jupiter’s amorous exploits and of the dispute between Cupid and Apollo after the latter killed Python, about which he boasted excessively.81 The rest of the room was richly hung with tapestries, just as was the room where Leda’s daughter was received by her new husband upon her return to Greece.82 [20v] Afterward, Vulcan had a large fire lit and Apicius the Delicate83 prepared for them an after-supper meal of sweet-meats so deliciously varied that it could very well have cost two hundred écus.84 Once everything had been duly and diligently prepared, Venus, her gleeful and gracious countenance illuminating the heavens, took Andro’s and his beloved’s hands, both blissful, and guided them into this sumptuous chamber where she had her three Graces put them to bed. Once this was done, they all left the room. But before that, the good goddess infused both of them—right down to the very marrow in their bones and the blood coursing through their veins—with her warm, heavenly influence. Then the two lovers, more joyful than one could imagine, were speechless for quite some time, much as someone who, overcome with joy over the unexpected return of a friend, might lose the capacity to speak and could only throw his arms around his friend’s neck and gently embrace him, all the while crying, his heart filled with gladness. Cupid stood undetected in a corner of the room, holding a little lamp that seemed to sparkle with joy [21r] and glow with love. Those

104 Comptes amoureux lhermes, que luy esprainct la liesse de son cœur. Cupido sans estre apperceu estoit à ung coing du lict, tenant une petite lampe, qui sembloit petiller de joye, [21r] et s’eschauffer aussi en amour. Or en estoit la lumiere simple, qui augmentoit la Grace et beaulté de l’ung, et l’aultre. La belle Dame, qui au paravant se mouroit entre les impotens et sans chaleur accollemens de Pyralius, maintenant s’esjouyt de manier les membres refaictz et en bon point, de son nouvel amy et de veoir sa belle, et bien colourée face: ses vers yeulx: sa blonde barbe: sa poictrine forte, et playne de chaleur: ses bracs non rudes audelicieux exercisse d’amours. De tout elle s’esmerveuille: comme ung qui par la commiseration des haulx Dieux nouvellement a receu le benefice de veoir: il ne se peult saoller de getter l’œil sur la couleur des choses, sur la structure et edifice de ce beau Monde. D’ailleurs le chevallier Andro de son cousté n’en faisoit pas moins. Car ces deux yeulx estoient si detenuz à considerer la parfaicte beaulté de son amye, que à peine scavoit il si songeoit ou si de verité il appercevoit point chose celeste, ou humaine. En premier lieu il consideroit l’amplitude et spaciosité de son clair front bien arondy, les surcilz plus noircissans que nul jayet faictz en manière de l’arc d’amour. Après s’arrestoit sus la splendeur de ses deux beaulx yeulx relucens, et semblans droictement en leur aspect deux estoilles celestes: ou entre deux estoit posé ung joly nez traictifz. Consideroit aussi la fresche couleur et le beau tain de sa face: la rotondité de ses jouës vermeilles, la petitesse de sa riante bouche, avec l’elevation des lefvres coralines, et si bien joinctes qu’elles sembloient [21v] à tous coups semondre ung souëf et amoureux baiser. Je me tais icy de vous racompter plus avant quelle elegance il trouvaoit au fosselu menton, et en la blancheur delicieuse de sa gorge. Mais encores trop luy plaisoit d’asseoir le regard attentif sur la rondeur des petitz tetons loing l’ung de l’aultre bien demy pied: la fermeté des ses bracs massifz, et sur la beaulte de ses mains delicates, et blanches comme albastre. Puis il estoit merveuilleusement resjouy de luy manier le ventre uny et dure, comme on veoit es statues de l’ouvraige de Phidias excellent tailleur d’ymaiges. Il gettoit doulcement aussi la main sus ses cuysses bien tournées, et sus la plaine charnure de ses molletz genoux. Quant à la vuydure de ses jambes, rien n’eust sceu estre plus elegant, joinct que ses piedz demonstroient je ne scay quelle mignotise amyable.

Tales and Trials of Love 105 qualities imparted such a pure clarity to its light that it further enhanced the beauty and grace of both lovers.85 The lovely lady, once dying a slow death in Pyralius’s impotent and lifeless embrace, could now rejoice beneath the touch of her new beloved’s youth and charm and at the sight of his handsome, radiant face, green eyes, blond beard, strong chest, and still-warm wound, his arms not at all unpleasant to feel during the delicious acts of love. She marveled at all of this, as might one who, thanks to the compassion of the divine gods, had only just received the gift of sight and could hardly get enough of observing the color, shape, and aspect of this wonderful world. Indeed, the knight Andro was no less impressed, for his two eyes were so drawn to contemplate the perfect beauty of his beloved that he hardly knew if he were dreaming or if he truly was seeing something at once quite divine and human. He first examined her broad, ample brow, which was glowing and perfectly proportioned, her eyebrows, jet-black and shaped like Cupid’s bow. His gaze then lingered over the splendor of her beautiful, radiant eyes (one easily could have taken them for stars in the heavens above), between which was positioned a lovely nose of graceful length. He also contemplated the fresh color and beautiful complexion of her face, the roundness of her rosy cheeks, the slightness of her cheerful mouth with its raised, coral-colored lips, so perfectly parted that they seemed [21v] to form a perpetual, sweet, loving kiss. I restrain myself here from further revealing to you the elegance that he perceived in her dimpled chin and in the delicious paleness of her neck and breast. But he found more pleasure still in passing his attentive gaze over the mounds of her small breasts (a good six inches separating the two of them), the firmness of her able arms and the beauty of her delicate hands, white as alabaster. He then delighted gloriously in caressing her torso, as smooth and firm to the touch as one of Phidias’s delicately fashioned sculptures.86 He gently passed his hand over her well-formed thighs and the soft, supple flesh behind her knees. As for the contour of her legs, nothing rivaled their elegance, and his hand travelled down their length to find unimaginably charming and coquettish feet.

106 Comptes amoureux Que vous diray je plus, chiere compaignes, l’heureux Andro ne scavoit bonnement se satisfaire à la speculation de si elegant et bien composé corps: tant l’avoit songeusement formée la souveraine Ouvriere Nature. Mais en fin la joye conceuë de telle contemplation avera du Chevallier telle parolles. «Hé sieur Amour, comment par vostre benefice je suis presentement satisfaict en mes amoureux desirs? Certes oncques le filz de l’antique Saturnus de vous ne receut si entiere felicité, comme maintenant je fais, combien que le monde par tout face bruyt de ses bien heuretéz. Il jouyt de la belle Danes enserrée en la [22r] tour d’arain: mais par vostre haulte divinité Sieur Amour, par quel moyen? Par celluy certes, qui faict apres vituperer de chascun, qui les choses de plus pres scait considerer, la Dame laquelle ainsi villainement se prostitue: ny intervenant la saincte affection d’amours. Et Leda comment vint elle à consentir aux lascifz et impudiques accolemens? Ne fut elle improbement deceuë par son amy masqué, et mis soubz la semblance d’ung des oyseaux de Venus? En telle erreur aussi cheust la femme d’Amphitrion. «Que si vrayement elle n’eussent esté plaines de simple simplesse (que je le dye ainsi) et femmes aiant peu veu des tromperies des faulx Amants: jamais n’en eust il planté, ne erigé les trophées de victoire. O doncques, ma chiere amye Rosemonde, la seulle vie de ma vie, mon ame propre, esperit de mes parolles, pensée de mes pensées, le confort de mes sens, la joliete de mes esperances, plaisir de mes vœux, la lyesse de mon cœur, est tresgrande la beatitude que je sens: quand ores je me veoy prendre la fruition de cestuy vostre excellent et celeste corps: non par fraulde, mais par la bonté seulle et vertu d’Amour, et la vostre. O la victoire mienne aujourd’huy incomprehensible: O vous troys et quatre fois bien heureuse, quand par ce mien opportun et secourable secours estes delies des lyens, diray je de mort: ou de la mesme misere eterne, pire de la mort? Que plus ne vous trouverez entre les descharnez bracs du vieil Titon. Vous, Espritz, qui vivez es heureux champs [22v] Elisiens avec toutte lyesse. «Quelle je vous prie peust estre celle vostre lyesse comparée à la mienne? Venez à moy, ò ames desolées, qui jadiz sans avoir eu vostre bien prentendu estes decedées, et de noz plaisirs aumoins quelque peu vous esjouyssez et confortez. Les Dieux debonnaires vous concedent

Tales and Trials of Love 107 What more could I possibly tell you, dear friends? Andro was so delighted that he could not aptly satisfy himself simply by gazing at such an elegant and perfectly formed body, so carefully had Mother Nature’s sovereign power shaped her form. The knight’s detailed study of her body brought him such great delight that he finally found the words to express his joy: “Oh, Sir Cupid, how could you possibly have made me as satisfied in love as I am now? Certainly in ancient times, Saturn’s son87 never received such complete joy from you as I do now, so much so that the whole world rejoices in its good fortune. He took pleasure in the lovely lady locked up in the [22r] stone tower,88 but I ask on behalf of your sacred and holy name, Sir Cupid, by what means? Certainly by means that are later execrated by everyone sufficiently wise to look beyond the surface. In that case, the lady was quite villainously prostituted. Love’s sacred affection hardly had anything to do with that situation. “And Leda, how did she come to consent to such lascivious and shameful accolades? Did her lover, who was disguised as one of Venus’s birds, not improperly deceive her? The wife of Amphitryon also fell into such a disgrace.89 “If only they had not been such innocent women (if I may say so) with so little experience of love’s deceptions, he might never have conquered them and reigned triumphant. So therefore, my dear Rosemonde, the only light of my life, my very soul, the inspiration of my speech, the origin of my thought, the comfort to my senses, the joy of my hopes, the pleasure of my wishes, the lightness of my heart, so great is my present bliss that I witness myself regaling in the fruit of your exceptional and heavenly body, not by fraud, but by virtue of both your and Cupid’s blessing. Oh, how unbelievably significant is my present victory! Oh, how your happiness is now increased three- or fourfold, for my opportune and saving grace has delivered you from bondage, or, may I say, from death or from near eternal misery. Is that not worse than death? May you never again find yourself caught between the lifeless arms of that old Tithonus.90 “And you, spirits who dwell gleefully in the blissful [22v] Elysian Fields,91 how could your joy possibly compare to mine? Come to me, all you sorrowful souls who died unsatisfied; rejoice and find comfort in our delights for a while. The gracious gods concede to you this gift, and the peace that my soul now receives, with inexpressible joy.” Then, the lover

108 Comptes amoureux tel salut et repos, que mon ame recoipt maintenant avec indicible solas. L’heureux Amant se teust: et commenca de faire ses approches pres de la forteresse amoureuse. Laquelle longuement ne peult souffrir la batterie qu’elle ne se rendit. Le desconfort et desespoir de Pyralius. [woodcut] Or cependant le miserable Pyralius s’en fuyt par les boys hurlant et criant comme beste saulvaige: ou comme faisoit Lycaon eschappé de la ruyne de son Pallais mis à feu et à sang. «O cruel sort,» disoit [23r] il, «de ma contempnée et impotente vieillesse!» «O diverses et perverses Destinées! Et ò injurieux Amour quand tu m’as ores ma belle femme tolluë de moy aymée si tendrement, que celle impotente affection me contraignit luy oster sa liberté, et l’enfermer en forteresse, se me sembloit, imprenable. «Trop tu as de pouvoir, ò injurieux Amour. Car que m’ont vallu mes anxieuses solocitudes? Que m’ont vallu mes machinations contre tes inefugibles puissances? O le ciel!Ò la terre! Ò les mains de Neptune!J’enraige, je meurs. Que crieray je? Ou iray je à refuge pour encores eschapper les mains de mon Adultere ennemy? Le pauvre dolent se teust: et pour la grande ire à peine fuyant pouvoit il le chemin couvert de la noyre nuyct, discerner: et si sent voleter au tour de sa teste je ne scay quelz oiseaux de maulvais presaige, et qui hantent les sepulchres des trespassez. Et quand il fut au meilleu du boys, à luy s’apparurent les horribles Furies Alecto, Megera, et Tisophone horriblement secouans leurs testes serpentines, et l’espouventans de leurs voix Plutoniques et de mort, dont perdit il entierement le sens. Si delibera en ce lieu là de finer sa miserable vie: et se pendre en ung arbre. Ainsi paya le malheureux la peine de sa froide Jalouzie. Et les Amoureux en joye et liesse à l’ayde d’Amour jouyrent long temps de leurs plaisirs. Icy madame Melibée faisoit fin à son compte, et comme lassée de parler reprenoit son haleyne, quand elle veit Madame Cebille attaincte du remort de [23v] sa conscience, et espouventée des justes et rigoureuses punitions d’Amour, paslir et muer couleur: et prendre tel visaige consterné de je ne scay quelle paour panique, que ont les

Tales and Trials of Love 109 grew silent in his bliss and began to approach the fortress of love, which, unable to endure his assault for long, gave in to him.

Pyralius’s Misery and Despair. Meanwhile, miserable old Pyralius fled into the woods, screaming and wailing as if a wild animal, or as one might imagine Lycaon did, having escaped from the rubble of his burned and plundered palace.92 “Oh, how unlucky I am!” he said, [23r] “to be scorned and impotent in my old age!” “Oh, you repugnant, nefarious Destinies! And you, injurious Cupid, who has taken my wife—whom I loved so dearly—away from me! Unable to please her, my love compelled me to rob her of her freedom and lock her up in a fortress, which I believed to be impenetrable! “Cupid, you are too powerful and do too much harm! Do my anxiety and paranoia merit such punishment? And does my plotting against your inescapable power merit such punishment, as well? I curse the heavens! I curse the Earth! I curse Neptune’s seas! I must be going mad and dying! What am I saying? Where might I seek refuge from the vengeful hands of my adulterous rival?” The poor, pained man grew silent and, blinded by his rage, could hardly find his way as he fled into the dark night. And then he caught sight of some strange birds circling overhead that bring bad luck and haunt the tombs of the dead. Once he was deep in the woods, those horrible Furies, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, appeared to him, shaking their serpent-wreathed heads, frightening him with their deathly, Plutonic cries and driving him entirely mad.93 Thus, he decided right then and there to put an end to his miserable existence and hung himself from a tree. This is the price that unfortunate soul paid for his irrational jealousy. And, with Cupid’s help, the young lovers lived happily ever after, lightheartedly and fulfilled. With that, Madame Melibée’s story was drawing to a close, and, as if speaking had made her weary, she was stopping to catch her breath when she caught sight of Madame Cebille, who was growing pale, all the color draining from her face. Overcome with remorse [23v] and horrified

110 Comptes amoureux failliz et couards Gendarmes en ung Camp lors qu’ilz oyent sonner les fainctes alarmes, le sang leurs fuyt des membres au cœur affin qu’ilz se retiennent en vie. Mais aufort se rasseurant à peine, persistoit en son maulvais vouloir. Parquoy va conclurre madame Melibée. «Doncques, mes cheres compaignes, assez vous pouves veoir que jamais celle qui de bon cœur et perfaict s’adonne au devot et sacré service Amoureux, qu’il n’y a si griefve oppression, ne si dangereux danger, duquel on ne puisse sortir et eschapper par l’ayde et secours du sainct Amour. La damoiselle Rosemonde fut longuement opprimée de son jaloux mary: et vous en avez veu l’issue, certes bonne et heureuse: et telle que je luy prie devotement de toute mon affection tousjours donner à ses bonnes et loyalles devotes. Que doresnavant ces dangereux et espouventables perilz, ou tresbuschent les desloialles c’est adire, qui ayment ou pour l’avoir, ou meuës de la luxure seulle, ne les viennent à retarder. Or apporte icy ores ses froides allegations, ses mensongiers arguments madame Cebille pour vous, mes chiers compaignes, attirer à sa conjuration. Certainement si bien je vous congnois touttes, ja rien n’en ferez, ains patiemment attendrez pour veoir quelle sera la peine, enquoy je la veoy encourir, la miserable. Qui eust veu [24r] alors touttes les Dames de celle compaignie en leurs faces plaines de merveille meslée de craincte non asses asseurée, celluy eust heu devant ses yeulx les opressez citoiens d’une ville consultans par bendes du remedde contre le tyrant, qui leur ravit la liberté premiere. Aufort apres pource qu’elles se sentoient non coulpables, ne n’avoir jamais offendu le sainct Amour sans prompte et soubdaine repentence, se rasseurerent: et entre elles ne fut plus parlé de celle matiere jusques au lendemain, pour ce qu’il estoit temps de soupper. Dont les tables dressées, seirent chascune en son ordre faisant la plus grosse chiere du monde. Car tant bien et si somptueusement furent traictées par madame Salphionne qui là aux vendanges les avoit invitées, que mieulx on n’eust peu. La sortie de table fut d’une chanson chantée à la louenge du sainct Amour par madame Agripine vieille Dame: Mais qui toute sa jeunesse de promptissime et loyal affection c’estoit adonée au devot service.

Tales and Trials of Love 111 by Cupid’s just and severe punishments, Cebille’s face took on a strange expression of alarmed dismay and fear, a look shared by weak and cowardly horsemen on hearing the call to arms resound through their camp: all the blood rushes from their limbs to their hearts, as they fight for their lives. And then Madame Melibée began to conclude her tale. “Thus, my dear friends, you have heard enough to know that for anyone with a good and pure heart, and who devotes herself fully to Cupid’s holy service, there is neither so great oppression nor so perilous a danger from which Cupid is unable to deliver her; he will always come to her aid and rescue. Lady Rosemonde was long oppressed by her jealous husband, and you heard the felicitous, happy end to that tale. And I pray fervently and wholeheartedly that Cupid may grant the same to all of his good and loyal devotees. And henceforth, may such dangerous and terrible perils, which tend to trouble the disloyal (and by that, I mean those whose love consists of merely wanting to possess another or of simply seeking sensual pleasures), never get in the way of their happiness. Now, my dear friends, Madame Cebille may present chilling allegations and faulty arguments in order to draw you in to her conspiracy. Certainly, if I know all of you as well as I believe that I do, you will do nothing save patiently wait to see what will be her punishment, and I am sure that the wretched woman will receive one. At that moment, anyone who had seen [24r] all of the ladies present at that gathering, wearing expressions of sheer marvel mixed with fear (and none too sure of herself), would have thought he had witnessed a town of oppressed citizens, discussing among themselves how to overcome the tyrant who had taken away their every freedom. But then soon after, since they all felt that they were not guilty of such crimes, nor had they ever offended Cupid in all his holiness without having immediately and genuinely repented, they reassured one another and spoke not another word of the matter until the following day, for it was time to eat supper. Once the tables were set for the meal, each woman sat accordingly and made the most of the festivities, for Madame Salphionne, who had invited them there for the wine harvest, treated them better and more sumptuously than one could imagine. The meal was concluded with a song sung in honor of his holiness, Cupid, by Madame Agripine,94 a woman many years their elder, but who had spent her entire youth devoting herself earnestly, loyally, and affectionately to his service.

112 Comptes amoureux * Chanson chantée à la louenge du Dieu d’Amour. [24v]

CHANSON.

Plus ne suis ce que j’ay esté, Et ne scaurois jamais estre: Mon beau printemps, mon Esté Ont faict le sault par la fenestre. Amour tu as esté mon maistre: Je t’ay servy sus tous les Dieux. O si je pouvois encor naistre, Comment je te servirois mieulx! Fin du Premier compte Amoureux.

Tales and Trials of Love 113 * Song Sung in Honor of the God of Love.95 [24v] SONG.

No longer am I what I was Nor ever would know how to be: Sweet spring, sweet summer, without pause, I’ve seen out of my window flee. Love, I have been your devotee— Above the rest, I worshipped you; If birth anew were given me, Oh, how much better would I do! Here ends the first Tale of Love.

114 Comptes amoureux [25r] COMPTE SECOND

par ma dame Andromeda admonestant les vertueuses dames d’eviter orgueil et riguer. [woodcut] Finy le compte faict par madame Melibée des amours de la dame Rosemonde, madame Andromeda gentille et Amoureuse femme se composa en geste propre, et advenant, puis avec une jolie et gratieuse mode fœminine va ouvrir sa vermeille bouche suafvement redolente, et dict: «Certes de tant, amoureuses Compaignes, que l’accusation acerbe de la dame Cebille euë à l’encontre du vray Amour, m’avoit troublée, et esmeuë en tous mes sentimens, d’autant ay je esté consolée, et reprins mes vages esperitz par la vraye et juste deffense de madame Lucienne. Que si ainsi fut advenu que l’Amour par la mesdisance des iniques eust esté deschassé à l’advenir hors des loyaulx cœurs femenins, et plus tost tresfortement n’eust la cause [25v] d’Amour esté soustenuë et deffenduë: mon propos et deliberation totale estoit de crever les yeulx, et rendre en eternelle et dolente cecité quiconques de vous eust en ce suivy l’opinion contraire. Mais maintenant que celle faulse erreur par le dire vertueulx de madame Lucienne est osté, et la chose bien appaisée, icy pour tousjours vous confermer és louables deliberations, et ficher en vos ames la vertu du perfaict Amour, et que vous en deschassez loing dehors, s’ilz y estoient entrez Orgueil et rigueur, je vous feray icy ung compte de la juste punition, que print la Déesse Venus d’une Orgueilleuse Dame qui ne voulut oncques donner mercy à ung sien fidele et loyal amant: Ce pendant Amoureuses compaignes, il vous plaira attentifvement m’escouter. [woodcut] De la feste celebrée en l’honneur de Venus, et de l’apparition d’icelle à Meridienne dame de grande beaulté. [26r] Jadis en l’antique cité de Mison chascun an, et à certain jour se solennisoient les jours en l’honneur de la Déesse Venus: ou

Tales and Trials of Love 115 [25r] TALE TWO Told by Madame Andromeda, in Which She Warns All Virtuous Women to Avoid the Sins of Pride and Ruthlessness.

Once Madame Melibée had finished telling Lady Rosemonde’s love story, another gentlewoman, Madame Andromeda (who also happened to find herself in love), carefully began to fashion her demeanor in a most appropriate and seemly way.1 Then, in a lovely, gracious, and feminine fashion, she parted her luscious, red lips, offering a hint of her sweet-smelling breath, and said: “You must have noticed, my fellow ladies-in-love, that as much as I was troubled by Madame Cebille’s bitter indictment of Cupid (for it stirred up all sorts of emotions), I was equally consoled by Madame Lucienne’s true and just defense of him. Indeed, it brought me back to my senses. If ever such slanderous speech were to succeed in discouraging deserving, young women from accepting love into their hearts, [25v] and furthermore, had we not already heard the merits of love so strongly supported and defended, then I would have been forced to claw out the eyes of anyone who had endorsed Madame Cebille’s faulty reasoning, thereby rendering her into an eternal and painful state of blindness. “But since Madame Lucienne has calmed the situation by refuting such blasphemy with her own most worthy tale, I now wish to banish the sins of pride and ruthlessness once and for all. This story is about the goddess Venus’s just punishment of a prideful lady who refused to take pity on a most faithful and loyal suitor. I assure you that this story will convince you of the validity of our stance and inspire you to embrace the value of true and perfect love. And now, I beg you dear ladies, to listen attentively.”

Of the Celebration Held in Honor of Venus and of the Goddess’s Apparition to Meridienne, a Lady of Great Beauty. [26r] Long ago in the ancient city of Mison,2 the most beautiful ladies and most noble young gentlemen in all of the realm—and even those from

116 Comptes amoureux s’assembloient de toute la province et lieux plus loing les belles dames, et jeunes hommes le mieulx en ordre, que faire se pouvoit. Par ce que de là jamais ne se despartoient qu’ilz n’eussent faict entre eulx amys, et amyes nouvelles, Entre aultres à une lieuë de la ville faisoit sa residence une noble et jeune dame, qui nagueres estoit nouvellement mariée au conte Giroante homme riche et puissant, mais assez plus vieil qu’il ne luy eust convenu. Celle dame avoit nom Meridienne, Dame pour vray de si excellente beaulté et esmerveillable, qu’elle eust peu d’ung sien simple regard ruyner et abbatre la haultesse de la salle de Juppiter: enflamber et rediger en cendre grise plus facilement, que ne feit l’oultrecuydé Phaëton, la machine du Monde, et eschauffer en son Amour toutes les statues qui furent jamais erigées au marché à Rome fut celle du continent Cato, ou celle de Xenocrates, qui ne peult estre esmeu à Luxure durant une longue nuict par Phirne une des plus lascives et elegantes courtisennes d’Athenes. Sachant doncques Meridienne que le jour solennelle à la Déesse de Paphos, estoit venu, coulpable de sa divine beaulté, de laquelle à ce jour vouloit faire monstre, et en captiver les cœurs des jeunes hommes, pour d’iceulx apres, orguilleusement montée, triumpher assez plus matin, que de coustume du lict se levoit, quand à elle (signe et presage de maul[26v]vaise yssue) apparut la grande Venus en la compaignie de son filz Amour, et de ses troys Graces portant la face austere et terrible, d’ire et courroux enflambée telle que prindrent en elles Juno et Pallas contre le temeraire Arbitre en la forest Ida. Et au passer qu’elle feit devant la couche de la dame Meridienne sur le poinct que le jour commence à s’apparoir aux humains, et que les estoilles esparses du ciel s’esvanouissent au comparoistre de l’Aurore, ne scay comment à celle irreverente halena sur la face en telle sorte qu’en ung moment le cœur luy enroidit de rigueur dans le ventre plus que jamais: elle devint intrectable du tout de volunté aspre, et severe, plus cruelle que Phineus: ne Harpalice la furieuse ne fut oncques de telle maulvaistié pleine. Brief la dame Meridienne eust l’estomac par l’aspect de la courroucée Déesse plus dur que le Cristal de Septentrion: et comme si elle se fust myrée dans le mirouer merveilleux de Meduse, demoura vuyde de pitié, et sans amour. Merveilleux fut le regard de la déesse, tout oultre plein d’indignation, et auquel vous l’eussiez peu congnoistre estre offencée amerement, quand Meridienne de peur se cacha dans le lict entre les linceulx.

Tales and Trials of Love 117 far away—would gather together for a lavish and festive celebration in honor of the goddess Venus. The feast earned its renown because everyone created new friendships and relationships before returning home. Among the attendees was a noble, young lady who lived about a mile and a half from town and was newly married to a count. This count, named Giroante, was a rich and powerful man, but rather older than was seemly for a bridegroom. The lady was named Meridienne, and she was a woman of such incredibly stunning beauty that with a single glance she could topple an edifice as lofty as the Temple of Jupiter.3 She could enflame with desire any of the inanimate statues that ever had been erected on the Roman Forum, whether of steadfast Cato or Xenocrates—the latter of which even Phryne (the most lascivious and elegant of the Greek courtesans) could not move to debauchery—reducing them to mere ash.4 And she could accomplish these things with greater ease than Phaëton, whose audacity nearly destroyed the world.5 Fully aware that it was the day of Venus’s celebration, Meridienne had risen earlier than usual. She wanted everyone to admire her legendary beauty and intended to use it to capture the hearts of young men in order to control them shamelessly. But then she saw Venus appear (a sure sign of bad [26v] things to come), accompanied by her son, Cupid, and the three Graces,6 whose expressions were austere and foreboding, full of ire and anger, as were those of Juno and Pallas Athena when an imprudent judge ruled against them in the forest of Mount Ida.7 Just as daylight was beginning to appear, and the few remaining stars in the sky gave way to the breaking dawn, Venus appeared before Meridienne’s bed. I do not understand how she did this, but she breathed onto her face in a way that made Meridienne’s heart turn as hard as stone. She became completely immobile; her disposition was bitter and difficult, crueler than Phineus.8 Not even that furious woman Harpalyce was so full of ill will.9 In other words, on seeing the goddess, Lady Meridienne became more unbending than the ice of the farthest regions of the north. And as if she had peered into Medusa’s mirror-like image and, transfixed by her terrifying aspect, she stood there with stonecold indifference, completely devoid of love. Miraculous was the power of Venus’s gaze and above all else, frightfully indignant. There was no mistaking that she had been most bitterly offended, and Meridienne hid fearfully under her bed sheets.

118 Comptes amoureux Description de la beaulté de Meridienne, et du triumphe d’icelle. [27r]

[woodcut]

Mais la pauvre imprudente oublia tost la vision, et se persuada avoir veu en songe ce qu’elle avoit veu vigilante sans dormir, et si adjousta. «Et bien Venus m’a menacée: A quelle occasion? Je le scay. Elle est envieuse de ma beaulté la sienne surpassante. Pourtant ne lairray je me transporter à l’assemblée ou je me scay estre solicitement attenduë: Je ne lairray passer les honneurs deubz à ma divine beaulté.» Ò l’orgueil en une Dame mortelle insupportable! Ò trop vaine oultrecuydance! Ò beaulté mal employée! Ò dures ses destinées! Meridienne l’orgueilleuse Contesse se voulant appareiller de ses plus beaulx et riches vestemens, appella six damoiselles ayans la charge de la vestir. Puis se lanceant hors du lict, se tint debout comme une puissance celeste, ne povant mettre aulcun moyen à sa coustumiere haultesse de cœur, non sans prendre de soy ung merveilleux contentement et solas qu’elle estoit ainsi belle et accomplie: non qu’elle eust desir d’en bailler par doulceur la fruition à qui le meriteroit, mais qu’elle en esperoit brusler, [27v] et travailler quelque pauvre imprudent, et par ce ne craignoit se laisser veoir les membres de son excellent corps nudz et decouvers. Lesquelz tant bien par nature maistresse ouvriere, proportionnez et composez, veritablement de blancheur, faisoient la blancheur de la neige paslir, voire estoit ce corps plus vivement blanc, que ne fut oncques la belle fille de Doris tant aymée du Monocule Cyclope. Et davantaige elle avec la mignotise que forment les actes de la Courtisenne Lays de Corinthe, tiroit aulcuns souspirs ou plustost insidiations pour (comme l’yraigne les petites mouches en ses filletz) prendre les cœurs des simples, et moins caulx. Et tandis qu’elle s’aornoit de l’habit Misonien à certains jeunes gentilz hommes de sa maison, lesquelz adoncques s’estoient presentés à son lever, causoit et devisoit par manière d’essay comment elle pourroit trespromptement naufrager quiconques ce jour là aborderoit la nef de son desir sur le roch de sa beaulté: estant là en aguait, comme estoient les Syrenes, voulantz submerger le saige, et prudent Ulixe. Ainsi parlant, rompoit les parolles avec aulcunes doulceurs: si

Tales and Trials of Love 119 A Description of Meridienne’s Beauty, and How She Used It To Reign Over Her Admirers. [27r] But the poor woman was rash and quickly forgot the vision that she had just seen. She thoroughly convinced herself that the apparition was nothing more than a nightmare. “Venus haunted my dreams, but why?” she said to herself. “I know why. She is envious of my beauty, for it surpasses her own. But why shouldn’t I attend the celebration, for I know that others are expecting me? I surely cannot ignore the homage that my great beauty has earned.” Oh, what unbearable vanity this mere mortal woman possesses! Oh, how vain and arrogant she is! Oh, what poor use she makes of her beauty! Oh, what an unfortunate end she is sure to meet! The vain countess Meridienne, eager to adorn herself with her most beautiful and sumptuous clothing, called in six young ladies-in-waiting to help her dress. Then, throwing herself out of bed, she looked down at them haughtily, unable to bridle her customary arrogance, but not without taking immeasurable pleasure and comfort in the fact that she was so exquisitely beautiful. Nor did she have the slightest desire to grant any favor to even the most deserving suitors. Rather, she delighted in seeing those poor unfortunate souls burn with desire [27v] and pine away for her. To that end, she never hesitated to bare her lovely arms (or indeed any part of her exquisite body) for all to see. Every part of her body was extremely well fashioned and perfectly proportioned by Mother Nature, and her skin so very fair that even the whitest snow paled in comparison. Indeed, her complexion was fairer even than was that of Doris’s daughter, the beautiful girl whom the one-eyed Cyclops so loved.10 And furthermore, with her flirtations, which rivaled those of the courtesan Lais from Corinth (or more accurately, the manipulations with which she stole the hearts of the simplest and least astute targets, just as a spider draws unsuspecting little flies into its web),11 she had any man she wanted hanging on her every word. And while she was getting dressed in her traditional Misonian costume, she chatted and gossiped with a few young gentlemen in her household who had come to participate in her toilette. This gave her ample practice for how she could one day effectively shipwreck whosoever decided to book passage on her figurative ship of desire by

120 Comptes amoureux que promptement sembloit sa voix instruments de plusieurs chordes musicalement accordées. Et pas n’eust sceu à mon advis, la femme de Marc Anthoine lors qu’elle desploya les forces de son parler pour à soy rendre captif qui venoit pour la subjuguer soubz l’empire Romain, la surpasser d’eloquence, et bien dire. Telle fois voltigeoit des yeulx avec certaine manière si tresavenante, que les regar[28r]dans (comme jadis amusoit en l’isle de Bretaigne les chevaliers errans de la table ronde, celle beste qui tousjours glattisoit,) demeuroient raviz et amusez ne s’appercevans de la servitude, en laquelle les induisoit la grace de si celestes yeulx. Apres quand elle se taisoit, estoient forcez les escoutans à desirer encores d’entendre sa voix, comme s’ilz eussent ouy Tespis avec ses neuf filles chantant les faictz des prœux, ou bien suyvans Orpheus enyvrez des sons de son leut par desers et boccaiges. Mais l’affection que la dame avoit de se trouver des premieres ou elle peult exercer sa cruaulté, hasta ses Damoiselles de prestement la vestir. Lors qui l’eust veuë en ses accoustremens de soye enrichis de pierreries, et ou estoient figurées en broderie certaines torches ardentes, voulant par ce signifier le pouvoir de sa beaulté incomparable et divine, eust veu ung corps lumineux et celeste. A brief dire, rien certes ne luy deffailloit fors seulement doulceur et pitié. Desja, le bruyt de la multitude comparuë des gentilz hommes et grans dames de la ville, qui luy vouloient faire compaignie, dehors se faisoient ouyr, et l’attendoit on comme chose tresdesirée: non aultrement certes que la nouvelle fiancée de son espoux est à la porte du temple attenduë. Donc apres les aultres plusieurs ceremonies feminines: et qu’elle eust prins conseil de son mirouer trois et quattre fois, la voicy apparoistre en la presence de ceulx qui l’attendoient: et à l’yssuë de son palais resembla la grande Venus, laquelle partoit de l’isle de Chippre pour [28v] tirer droit au mont Pellion à l’assemblée des nopces du Roy Pelleus et de Thetis: puis de là en Phrigie à la contention des beaultez, montée sur son doré chariot trainé par douze colombes blanches comme laict. Incontinent au sortir Meridienne feit abbaisser les veues toutes à ung coup frappées avec la lumiere de ses yeulx, et avec celle des pierres precieuses, desquelles elle resplendissoit toute.

Tales and Trials of Love 121 crashing them blindly into the treacherous rock that was her beauty, just as the Sirens who attempted to lure Odysseus, hoping to overcome his wisdom and caution.12 As she spoke, she interspersed her speech with numerous sweet nothings, and her voice was as flawless as chords played on a finely tuned instrument. Not even Mark Antony’s lover surpassed her in eloquence and expression, and she was skilled in the same tactics (she used the power of her speech to render captive those who had come to subjugate her under the Roman Empire).13 Every time that she batted her eyes, the effect was so cunning that her admirers [28r] were completely ravished and unaware of their impending servitude (just as the Knights of the Round Table in the olden days of Great Britain, who wildly chased after any beast that made noise), indeed they accepted it willingly in order to be in the presence of those heavenly eyes. Once she had finished speaking, her admirers were left yearning to hear her sweet voice again, as if they had heard Thespis with his nine Muses singing of chivalric deeds, or as if they had followed Orpheus across deserts and through swamps, intoxicated by the sound of his lute.14 But since Lady Meridienne so loved to arrive early in order to have first pick among the men who would be her potential victims, she hastened her ladies-in-waiting to dress her quickly. Anyone who happened to see her silk clothing encrusted with precious stones and embroidered all over with ardent flames signifying the power of her incomparable, divine beauty, would have taken her for some celestial, luminescent body. In other words, she lacked absolutely nothing, except kindness and mercy. One could already hear the noise of the crowd of admirers outside—gentlemen and noble women who wanted to share in her company and were waiting for her as if she were a highly prized commodity, not much different from a groom waiting for his new bride at the altar. And so after completing all of the necessary feminine routines, and once she had checked her appearance in the mirror three or four times, there she appeared in the presence of her admirers. As she exited the palace, one would have taken her for the goddess Venus, who had left the island of Cyprus in order to [28v] attend the wedding of King Peleus and Thetis on Mount Pelion, and then after leaving there, she went on to Phrygia to attend the Judgment of Paris, mounted on her golden chariot led by twelve snow white doves.15 Meridienne’s gleaming eyes, as well as the precious stones adorning her clothing that made her positively radiant, immediately dazzled her admirers.

122 Comptes amoureux Et quand elle eslevoit sa face sur les regardans, on debattoit assavoir si les roses rubicondes et vermeilles cueillies sur le poinct que l’Aurore se lieve, avoient si mignonnement colorée la face de Meridienne, ou si le lustre des jouës d’elle s’estoit point espandu sur la face desdictes roses. Aultres jectans l’œil sur la cheveleure blonde et desliée à l’entour du large front moderement undoiante, et de beaucoup meilleur grace, que n’espand pas sa queuë l’oiseau de la Déesse Juno, y estoient fourvoiez diversement, suspendz si la reluisance d’iceulx avoit point presté la splendeur à une coiffe d’or, dont sa teste estoit richement decorée. Aulcuns estoient doubteux si comme Phebe recoit d’aultre, que de soy la lumiere, le jour prenoit pour son lumineux lustre des yeulx de la Dame: ou bien si elle avecques le Soleil ensemble regnoit quant à induire les lumieres sur les miserables humains. Deux grosses perles, telles que portoit en ses oreilles Cleopatra royne d’Egipte vrayement le seul chef d’œuvre de nature, luy propendoient des oreilles. Par dessus ses divins yeulx elle avoit les sourcilz resemblans proprement à [29r] l’arc, dont Cupido assubjectit à soy et les Dieux, et les hommes. Et les mesmes sourcilz estoient divisez par decente espace avec tresbelle equalité subtilz et noirs comme ung jayet, du meillieu desquelz descendoit le nez esgual et bien traictif: et au dessoubz estoit posée la bouche vermeille fort bien enrichie par composition des coralines lefvres, entre lesquelles les dens petites et deuëment arrengées reluisoient par dessus le tresblanc yvoire. De ce que je vous en ay ja dict, amoureuses Dames, poves à part vous considerer la perfection de tout le demeurant du corps. Mais encor diray je sans aultre contention, Que les odeurs, de quoy elle se perfuma, estoient moindre à la suavité de l’halayne qui luy despartoit de son bel estomach. Adoncques yssant de sa chambre en seigneurialle et haultaine alleure, marchoit non aultrement que faisoit Venus apres s’estre apparuë au Duc Eneas dans la Forestz de Carthaige. Et sortie de son Palais tenoit haulte la face, et avoit souverain plaisir de la presse que faisoient les hommes accourantz pour la veoir, comme quand la trompette faict assembler le peuple d’une Cité pour ouyr prononcer l’esdict du Roy: ou pour veoir les Ambassadeurs de Turquie, ou d’aultres Nations plus estranges qui arrivent et se logent. En cest ordre et venuste elegance, Amoureuses Dames tel paraventure que la belle Idalia n’apparut onc à Mars Dieu des Batailles,

Tales and Trials of Love 123 And when she raised her head to take in the view, they all wondered whether her rosy cheeks got their color directly from the brilliant, red roses that had been freshly picked at dawn, or if it was rather the luster of her complexion that had lent its blush to those very roses. Many others in the audience admired her blond hair, cascading freely to frame a delicately shaped forehead (one even more graceful than the fan of tail feathers that the goddess Juno’s bird displays), and they wondered whether its brilliance were in part responsible for the splendor of the golden hood that so elegantly adorned her head.16 And yet others began to wonder exactly from where Phoebus Apollo got his radiance: did the first light of dawn owe its luminosity to this lady’s eyes, or did she in fact reign together with the sun in order to cast light down upon other, mere mortals? Two enormous pearls—true miracles of nature—hung from her ears, such as those that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt wore. Above her marvelous eyes were eyebrows that quite resembled [29r] the bow with which Cupid ensnared both gods and men alike. And those very same, jet-black eyebrows were separated by a beautiful, seemly, and subtle equidistance. Likewise, between them descended a well-proportioned nose, and below that rested a bright red mouth, its shape further highlighted by lips of coral, between which her dainty, beautifully spaced teeth shone as brightly as if made of the purest ivory. You will surmise from what I have just told you, my dear ladies-inlove, that the rest of her body also was perfectly formed. But I will go on to tell you without hesitation that even the delicate scent of her perfume could not equal the sweetness of the breath that emanated from that lovely throat. And so, as she left her chambers in a most noble and dignified manner, one would have taken her for Venus, as she appeared to Aeneas in the forest of Carthage.17 As she exited her palace, she held her head high and delighted enormously in the throngs of people who strained to catch a glimpse of her, just as one sees when the sounding of trumpets prompt the townspeople to assemble in order to hear an edict of the King announced, or in order to see the ambassadors newly arrived from Turkey, or from other nations even more exotic and far removed, who have come to visit.18 It was precisely this type of allure and entrancing grace, my dear ladies-in-love, that the lovely Venus used to attract Mars, the god of war, thereby initiating quite a peradventure, or for that matter, how the

124 Comptes amoureux ne à elle apres le beau Adonis, ne l’enfant delicat Ganimedes au souverain Juppiter lors qu’il [29v] le ravit, ne la tresbelle dame Psiches à son tendre Cupido, Meridienne montée sur une belle et paisible Hacquenée baye harnichée de veloux de la couleur du Ciel à gros fers d’or, s’en alloit à la feste de Venus. Et apres elle suyvoient montées sur grosses Hacquenées blanches quatorze Damoiselles d’une mesme pareure. Lesquelles coustoïent autant de jeunes gentilz hommes ensemble joyeusement devisans de plusieurs menuz et gracieux propos concernans le faict du delicieux Amour. A ung instant Meridienne descenduë de rechief grand nombre d’hommes et femmes pour la veoir l’environnerent pleins de merveilles, non aultrement que les Phrigiens à tard bien advisez, Helayne de Grece quand elle premierement arriva en leur Cité de Troye. Mais (las icy chose trop indigne) de tant que la Contesse se ouyoit louer, et recommander de beaulté et elegance, d’autant en devenoit elle plus superbe et fiere par dessus les aultres Dames et Damoiselles de l’assemblée comme Venus s’esleva orguilleusement par dessus les deux malcontentes Déesses quand par le jugement de Paris luy fut adjugé la pomme d’or preis de souveraine beaulté. Et cela (que vous l’entendez Amoureuses compaignes) qu’elle s’en vouloit usurper honneurs de Déesse, fut seule la cause d’où luy provindrent tous ses malheurs, et qu’elle desprisa le miserable jeune homme qui tant l’ayma, comme pour faire jacture de sa liberté toute, et de sa propre vie. Cestuy amant nommé Pyrance estoit ung jeune, [30r] beau, riche et gracieux gentil homme de Mison filz du conte Dragonet de Vagepont. Lequel comme il alla en tresbon ordre et equipaige à la feste avec plusieurs aultres jeunes gentilz hommes ses compaignons, d’adventure en chemin, rencontrant la Contesse Meridienne soubdain par ung traitre regard de faulse amour (faulse amour dis je, car doulceur ne peult jamais impetrer qu’elle regarda homme, fors pour en avoir passetemps, et se mocquer de luy) qu’elle luy lancea, non aultrement fut de desirs envers la Dame enflambé, que le filz de Priam par la promesse de Cytherea en l’amour de celle qui fut despuis la totale ruyne du royaulme de Phrigie. Et non aultrement fut il en estase ravy, que le roy Achrisius en la veuë de la Gorgonne vaincuë par le chevalier Perseo.

Tales and Trials of Love 125 handsome Adonis attracted her, or the delicate child Ganymede the sovereign Jupiter, who then [29v] abducted him, or even the very beautiful Lady Psyche with her dear Cupid.19 And likewise, Meridienne, mounted on a beautiful and well-mannered Hackney bay, its harness covered with skyblue velour and its horseshoes made of gold, set off for Venus’s celebration. And behind her followed fourteen ladies-in-waiting, dressed identically and mounted on great, white Hackneys.20 Accompanying them was the same number of young gentlemen, who were talking lightheartedly about various topics of both greater and lesser importance concerning that most delicious of sentiments: love. As soon as Meridienne dismounted, once again throngs of awestruck men and women swarmed about in order to catch a glimpse of her, much as did the Phrygians when Helen of Greece first arrived in the city of Troy, only to learn much later of the implications of that arrival.21 But (and, alas, this fact is quite shameful), the more that the countess heard others praise and admire her beauty and elegance, the more haughty and proud she became compared to the other ladies and damsels attending the celebration, just as did Venus, who flaunted her beauty arrogantly before the other two unfortunate goddesses after the Judgment of Paris, which granted her the golden apple, the prize given to the most beautiful.22 And that—deigning to usurp the honor due to the goddess Venus—was the sole cause of all of her misfortune (as you now understand, dear ladies-in-love). And she so despised that miserable young man who loved her so greatly, that she seemed to drain the life out of him, leaving him completely enslaved. That love-struck young man was named Pyrance, [30r] and he was a handsome, well-born, and gracious gentleman from Mison, the son of Count Dragonet de Vagepont. While he was proceeding with his impressive equipage to the celebration in the company of several other young gentlemen, he happened to come upon the countess Meridienne. And she cast toward him a treacherous glance of false love (I call this false love because her gaze was completely devoid of kindness, and its intention no more than amusement or mockery).23 It was in this manner that the son of Priam was enflamed with desire when Venus, the goddess of Cythera, promised him the love of the woman who would ultimately become the ruin of the Trojan Empire.24 His state of ravished ecstasy rivaled that of King Acrisius when Perseus defeated him by causing him to gaze onto the severed head of the Gorgon.25

126 Comptes amoureux Subtilement s’en apperceut la cruelle Meridienne, et estoit fort joyeuse et contente de veoir ainsi l’mprudent jeune homme se perdre en la lueur de ses beaulx yeulx: resemblante au serpent appellé Basilique, qui occit quiconque il aura attainct de son regard venimeux. Et par ce moyen qu’elle captivoit les cœurs, pensoit totalement estre equiparable ou plustost surmonter la Déesse Venus, à laquelle dés lors en avant porta peu de reverence en ses puissances eternes. Description du temple de Venus, et de son imaige, avecques les plains et pleurs de Pyrance amoureux de Meridienne, et de [30v] l’ingratitude d’icelle Meridienne, pour laquelle elle fut justement punie. [woodcut] En ce temple de Venus estoit ung beau jardin hors les murs de Mison non guieres loing, d’où souspiroit ung vent doulx et soif: fertile et plein de divers arbres domesticques, portant fruictz savoureux en diversité, lesquelz arbres de leurs espaisses fueilles, au lieu rendoient ung delectable et delicieux umbraige. Entre aultres le myrthe chargé de fruictages vers estoit prochain de sa Déesse. Ne en ce divin et sacré vergier n’y avoit plante qui fust enviellie du long aage. Mais les veoit on fresches avec leurs rainceaux jeunes à l’environ. Et oultre les fructiferes, y en avoit beaucoup d’aultres sterilles, qu’on avoit la plantez pour leur beaulté: comme cypres, et Platains: lesquelz sembloient toucher le Ciel de leurs cimes. Et ensemble là estoit l’arbre de la fille de Peneus combien que jadiz fut l’ennemye de la Déesse. A l’environ de chascune plante, comme par [31r] decoration sailloit l’hyerre mignonement entrel[a]ceant: aussi la vigne embrassoit plusieurs desdictz arbres chargés de raisins meurs, lesquelz les bons serviteurs de Venus espraignoient en tasses d’argent et en bevoient le moulst à ce eulx invitans en joye et liesse les ungs les aultres. Car l’esbat amoureux est plus doulce chose, si le Dieu Bacchus y adsiste et est presens, c’est une compaignie (que je le die ainsi) delectable, et qui peut beaucoup que Venus avec le bon Baccus, et desjoinctz quasi en est tousjours moindre la delectation. Donc en ce jardin et forestz amoureuse fort umbragée avoit plusieurs sieges dressez expressement de gazons vers ou estoient

Tales and Trials of Love 127 Meridienne was so cruel that she subtly observed him and was quite joyous and happy to see the imprudent young man lose himself in the luminescence of her beautiful eyes. Indeed, her eyes resembled those of the serpent called the basilisk, whose venomous gaze kills whosoever happens to look at it.26 And it was in precisely this way that she ensnared her victims, thinking that she was completely capable of rivaling—or even surpassing—the goddess Venus, for whose endless powers she had never had an inkling of respect. Description of Venus’s Temple, and of Her Statue, Including Pyrance’s Pain and Suffering due to His Love for Meridienne, and Concerning [30v] Meridienne’s Ingratitude, for Which She Was Duly Punished. In the temple of Venus, not far outside of the walls of Mison, there was a beautiful garden, whence blew a gentle, sweet-smelling breeze. It was lush and full of all sorts of native trees bearing richly diverse types of fruits. Those trees were so heavy with their thick leaves that they offered a deliciously irresistible shade. Among them was a myrtle, whose berryladen boughs were planted near a likeness of the goddess.27 There was not a single plant in this divine and hallowed garden that appeared to be advanced in age. Rather, all of them seemed newly sprouted and had young shoots popping up around them. And apart from the fruit trees, there were many other ornamental trees that had been planted simply for their beauty, such as the cypress and plane trees, the upper branches of which seemed to graze the sky. And there also was the tree into which Peneus transformed his daughter, although she had once been an enemy of the goddess.28 Each plant was embellished [31r] with tendrils of ivy delicately winding around its stem; the vine also enveloped several of the trees that were laden with mature grapes, the juice of which all faithful servants of Venus squeezed into silver cups and drank to their hearts’ content, inviting everyone to join in their revelry. The game of love is, after all, ever more pleasurable when the god Bacchus is present and active.29 Venus and Bacchus make a delectable and powerful pair (if I may call them so), and the merrymaking all the more enjoyable when they are together. Furthermore, in this pleasantly shady garden and forest of love there were several seats lavishly covered with green grass

128 Comptes amoureux convenuz à ce jour les Citadins de Myson les ungs icy, les aultres là par troppes et bandes faisans entre eulx la plus grande chiere du monde. Et au meillieu de ce beau Temple fut posé l’ymaige de la Déesse avec ung merveilleusement beau artifice et superbe, faicte de Marbre prins en l’isle de Parus. Laquelle ymaige, ayant avec une decence les lefvres entre ouvertes sembloit qu’elles soubrist aux regardans. Et la beaulté de la statuë est descouverte et nue de toutes vesture, sinon que de sa main senestre elle couvre sa nature. L’artifice du maistre qui avoit taillé si belle ymaige, estoit tel que combien que tresdure fust la pierre et solide, neantmoins l’avoit si promptement adaptée à tous les membres que mieulx on n’eust sceu. L’amoureux Pyrance pour estaindre quelque peu la flamme, qui tout vif le brusloit, apres le tour-[31v]nois, dont il acquist l’honneur par sur tout aultre de l’asemblée en ce sacré lieu, se tira loing à part hors de la veuë de celle qui luy avoit ravy le cœur ou les oysealux assemblez celebroient ja l’heure matutinale. Dont escoutant leurs mesliflueux et doux gasoiller, commenca plus que jamais à se condoloir de ses infaustes amours. «Las moy,» disoit il, plein de larmes, «ces petitz oysillons recoipvent entre eulx à loisir la joye et fruict de leurs tendres Amours, et moy pauvre dolent comblé de dueil et courroux par ces genefvres et haulx sapins errant n’ay la hardiesse de m’approcher de celle, qui m’a desrobé le cœur par son celeste regard: et ne luy ose pleinement manifester l’affection, qui me destruict par la craincte que je concoips d’estre d’elle refusé et mocqué. «Desja il m’est advis que je suys en la forestz Hircane: et que là je rencontre une furibonde tygresse, ou bien ung roux Lyon affamé, ou quelque ours terrible qui s’efforcent à faire de moy ung funeste sacrifice à leur Déesse Diana, ne plus ne moins que d’Atheon transformé en Cerf, advint par ses propres chiens. Et si ores mon ame craintifve, et quasi hors du sens doubte à poursuyvre chose plus doulce et soifve qu’on puisse en ce mortel estre trouver: tant me sont ennemys le Ciel et Fortune. Las d’où me vient celle paour inutile? Si vrayement j’estoys le plus failly et couard homme du monde, si esse que par le seul divin aspect de celle mon amye je debvrois estre faict homme courageux à descouvrir sans craincte la playe à qui la [32r] peult en ung instant resjoindre et guerir. «Mais pourquoy me retrouve je si somnolent et tardif? Pourquoy despens je le temps en souspirs vains sans effectz? Pourquoy m’oste

Tales and Trials of Love 129 scattered here and there, where the citizens of Mison would sit with their friends and family, enjoying one another’s company. And in the middle of this lovely temple was placed a statue of the goddess, beautifully and meticulously crafted, made of marble taken from the isle of Paros. That statue seemed to smile at those who looked at it, so convincingly were its lips parted. And the statue’s beautiful form was unencumbered, free from all clothing, save her left hand that covered her modesty. The skill of the artist who had carved this impressive image was such that despite the strength and solidity of the stone, he had so effortlessly shaped it to form her members that no one could imagine better craftsmanship. After a tournament, [31v] in which he won the greatest honor among all those attending the celebration on this sacred site, Pyrance hoped to extinguish ever so slightly the flame of desire that was completely consuming him, so love-struck was he. He stole away by himself, far from the view of the woman who had ravished his heart, near where a flock of birds had gathered to rejoice in the dawning day. Hearing their sweet and gentle song made him begin to lament more than ever his misfortune at having fallen in love. “Woe is me!” he said tearfully, “these little birds rejoice at will in the sweet fruits of their hearts’ desire, and here I am, poor, miserable, grief-stricken and resentful, wandering among these juniper trees and towering pines, lacking even the strength to approach her, and I certainly dare not show her any signs of affection. This woman stole my heart with her enchanting gaze, and she destroys my very being due to the fear that I feel that she might shun and mock me. “I already feel as if I were in the forest of Hyrcania, and I crossed the path of a fierce tigress, or a famished lion, or even some sort of terrifying bear that decided to make a sacrifice of me to the goddess Diana, just as Actaeon, transformed into a stag, was devoured by his own hunting dogs.30 And if, having now practically lost my senses and with my soul so fearful that I hesitate to pursue that very thing that is the dearest and sweetest experience that any mortal could imagine, then Fate and the Heavens have truly turned against me. Alas, why do I feel this useless fear? If I truly were the biggest failure and most cowardly man on Earth, then why should I not be made courageous by facing that very woman whose enchanting gaze I fear, revealing to her the gaping wound [32r] that she could instantaneously close and heal.

130 Comptes amoureux vergoigne la force de parler? Ha pauvre dolent! Qui me delivrera si je n’ose demander ayde à qui la me peult bailler? Et qui me guerira si entre boys espais, et desrompuz rochers je me nourris d’ung continuel mourir? Mieux m’eust esté d’avoir veuë ung venimeux basilique en celluy jour que mes yeulx s’arresterent sur la celeste face de la Contesse Meridienne. «Car en la suyvant je meurs et renaix, et vif et mort je me paiscz de ma tristesse: non aultrement que la Salemandre de son feu qu’elle engendre. Pyrance ainsi se lamentant de ses amours, il oyt par le boys les rainceaulx des arbres de plus fort s’esmouvoir, et faire bruyct: et les oysillons redoubler leur armonieux chantz, et zephirus adonc souffloit si souefvement, que la mer prochaine mouvoit ses undes sans tampester. Puis appercoit que le boys d’herbes et fleurs est diffusement en ung instant tappissé et enrichi. Dont esmerveillé de ce qu’il veoid, dit en soy mesmes: «Que veult signifier ceste si grande merveille?» Ung peu apres rehaulsant la veuë apparoit à travers le boys venir vers luy la grande Venus yssant de la mer en la compaignie de son Cupido, qui ca et là par le chemin semoit ung millier d’esperances. Parvenuë la Déesse jusques au lieu, ou estoit à l’umbrage le beau Pyrance, luy la saluë reveremment les genoux à terre: apres en gemissant [32v] va dire en ceste sorte, «O sacrée et immortelle Déesse, laquelle dés mon enfence j’ay tousjours diligemment reverée, pourquoy m’ont vos flambeaulx eschauffé en celle, que je scay que n’aura jamais pitié de mes ardeurs? Vers celle, dis je, qui ne veult par son haultaineté aymer qui l’ayme? Meritoient les sacrifices annuelz que j‘ay faictz en l’honneur de vostre sainct nom, que telle recompoense m’en deust estre impartye? Est-ce la le regard que vous avez en ceulx qui de bon cœur, et loyal s’emploient en vostre service? Ah pauvre desolé, ou est ton refuge, puis que les Dieux ne preignent solicitude des choses humaines?» Ce disant Pyrance de douleur se pasme, mais la benigne Déesse aulcunement commeuë par benignité le print entre ses bras en luy arrousant la face d’eauë rose. Et revenu qu’il fut le console, et dict: «Mon filz Pyrance, j’ay de loing entendu tes doloureuses plainctes: et pourtant que je ne veulx delaisser les miens au besoing suis-je yssuë de l’Oean pour te secourir: reprens tes forces, mon filz, et escoute ce qu’il est necessaire pour ton soulagement. Il me desplaist grandement de l’irreverance, que pour le jourd’huy la Contesse Meridienne me porte:

Tales and Trials of Love 131 “But why is my body so heavy and my motivation absent? Why do I spend so much time with my vain and useless laments? Why does shame rob me of the power to speak? Oh, you poor, pitiful soul! Who will save me if I dare not ask the help of she who could free me from this pain? And who will heal me if, as I wander in this thick wood and among these jagged cliffs, I find nourishment in dying over and over again? I would have been better served to contemplate a venomous basilisk on that day when my eyes first caught a glimpse of the countess Meridienne’s enchanting face.31 In my pursuit of her, I both die and am reborn; at once alive and dead, my sadness sustains me, much as a salamander is regenerated by fire.”32 Pyrance lamented his love-struck state thusly. In the woods, he could hear the rustling of the trees’ branches and the birds’ harmonious tunes grow louder and louder, and the zephyr blew so gently that waves moved through the nearby sea without stirring up the slightest hint of a storm. Then he noticed that the wood was instantly and completely embellished with grasses and flowers, as if a living tapestry. Pyrance marveled at what he saw and said to himself: “What is the meaning of this wonderful event?” Then, as he raised his head, he saw across the wood none other than the great Venus emerge from the sea with her son Cupid and advance toward him, leaving a bountiful trail of hope in their wake. Once the goddess reached the place where handsome, young Pyrance was waiting in the shade, he greeted her reverently on bended knee [32v] and then he said, tremblingly, “Oh, divine and immortal goddess, I have dutifully revered you since my earliest childhood. Why have you kindled this flame of desire within me when I know that the one whom I love is much too arrogant to take pity on my suffering or to return my love? Is this my recompense for the sacrifice that I made in your holy name every year? Is this how you treat those of good heart, who loyally worked in your service? Oh, you poor unfortunate souls! Where is your refuge, since the gods grant no solace at all to us mortals?” As he spoke these words, Pyrance collapsed in pain, but the kind goddess was moved by his display and took him in her arms and anointed his face with rosewater. And when he had come to, she said: “Pyrance, my son, I heard your mournful cries from afar, and since I do not wish to abandon my subjects in need, I rose from the ocean to comfort you. Find strength, my son, and listen to what you must do to find comfort. The countess Meridienne

132 Comptes amoureux et qu’elle se veult equiparer à ma haultesse, en cuydant que sa beaulté mortelle luy puysse servir de flambeaulx, et d’iceulx en consumer les hommes. Mais je jure par Stix le fleuve infernal, que je ne vouldroys perjurer, qu’en elle assez prochainement, si elle te refuse, je donneray à cognoistre aux orgueilleuses femmes combien [33r] est chose mal asseurée que de s’equiparer à mes puissances. Auffort premierement, je veulx toutes choses essayer avant que proceder en la punition. Il y a en la maison de ton amye ung jardin joignant la chambre ou elle couche. Et ce jourd’huy son vieil mary departira pour aller en une sienne besoigne urgente, et celle demeurera seule. Or sur la nuict, ò filz Pyrance, ne fauldras de venir au pres du mur du jardin, ou je seray pour te transporter secretement en la chambre d’elle. Là si on ne veult du tout contredire à mes puissances, aura on mercy de tes langueurs. [woodcut] Cela dict, la Déesse se disparut et retourna en l’ocean, la nuict venuë, et que les tenebres eurent osté les couleurs aux choses, et les citadins s’estant retirez des festins, et banquetz toute jour celebrez en l’honneur de Venus, Pyrance pervint au lieu designé du jardin sur l’heure de minuict: et lors prins entre les bras de la Dame Venus, fut sans estre apperceu d’aulcun vivant, mis dans la chambre de Meridienne. Elle estoit pour lors couchée souefment [33v] endormye, et Pyrance qui tant l’aymoit print ung cierge, qui ardoit en la chambre, et s’approchant du lict, avec ung souverain plaisir et joye, la divine beaulté d’elle contemploit: puis ne se peult enfin tenir que tendrement ne luy lancea ung amoureux baiser, et là son ame venuë jusques és extremes lefvres avec entier contentement se mesla entre les espritz de la Dame endormie. Adoncques Meridienne s’esveilla fort estonnée de veoir celluy en sa chambre qu’elle avoit veu toute jour en silence pour son amour souspirer, et lamenter, non aultrement que les petitz enfans s’espouventent des larves nocturnes, qui peuvent à peine ravoir leur voix de paour. Enfin voulut escrier ses Damoiselles, quand en voix bassette et tendre Pyrance se va excuser de l’audace prinse, et luy commencoit à decouvrir tresamplement comment en ce jour elle l’avoit rendu son captif. Puis disoit que la grande Venus ayant pitié de ses travaulx l’avoit là apporté, et luy mandoit de consentir à la doulce amour. Meridienne estoit grande clergesse, et scavoit beaucoup de l’art de Necromance: dont pensa à lors qu’elle se delivreroit de son

Tales and Trials of Love 133 greatly displeases me today by her irreverent actions, her desire to rival my majesty and her audacious belief that her mortal beauty is capable of enflaming and consuming men. But I swear on that infernal river Styx, on pain of perjury, that if she refuses you, she soon will learn what happens to arrogant women [33r]33 who dare to rival my powers.34 But first, I want to try another solution before proceeding with her punishment. In your beloved’s house there is a garden right beside her bedroom. Today, her decrepit old husband will leave to tend to urgent business, and she will remain home alone. Tonight, Pyrance my son, you must not fail to come to the garden wall, where I will secretly transport you into her bedroom. There, if no one wishes to contradict my supremacy, you will receive mercy for your suffering.” After having spoken, the goddess disappeared back into the ocean. When night had fallen, and the shadows of dusk had made the surroundings obscure, and once the townspeople had returned home from the day’s festivities and banquets celebrated in honor of Venus, Pyrance went to the designated place in the garden when the clock struck midnight. Lady Venus took him into her arms and stealthily placed him in Meridienne’s bedroom. She was already sleeping comfortably [33v], and Pyrance, who loved her so very much, picked up a candle that was burning in her room and approached her bed, where he admired her enchanting beauty with the greatest pleasure and joy imaginable. He then was unable to resist the urge to give her a tender kiss, and while doing so, his breath carried the very essence of his soul onto his lips, where it mingled in sheer delight with that of the woman who was lying there asleep. At that, Meridienne awoke, rather shocked to find in her bedroom the man whom she had seen pine away silently for her all day long. He was crying so over his plight that one might have taken him for a little child, one who was so afraid of nighttime goblins that he could scarcely find his voice in order to cry out in fear. Finally, she attempted to call out to her ladies-in-waiting when Pyrance, in a hushed, quiet voice, begged her forgiveness for his forwardness and began to explain fully just how she had succeeded earlier that day in capturing his heart. He then explained to her that the great goddess Venus had taken pity on him for his devotion to her and that she wished Meridienne to accept his gift of love. Meridienne was a learned woman who knew a lot about the arts of divination and magic, which she thought that she could use in order to rid herself of this

134 Comptes amoureux importun Amant. Si va composer son visaige en acte riant et bening, plein de grandes esperances, et luy va dire: «O le mien tresloyal et constant amy, j’ay escouté tes doulces, improbes, et lascives prieres: et par icelles j’ay sceu partie de l’Amour bonne que tu me portes: dont ne veulx je plus avant differer le pris de tes travaulx: Expedie toy, ò amoureux amy, viens cueillir en joye et plaisir les doulx fruictz [34r] que la Déesse Venus promect à ses humbles serviteurs.» Pyrance plus joyeulx que s’il eust eu en don la seigneurie d’ung royaulme, ou les immenses thresors du Roy Cresus: ou que les Dieux luy eussent octroyé ung vœu tel qu’ilz concederent au Roy Mydas de Phrigie, se devestoit cuydant se lancer dans le lict pres de sa lumiere. Mais lors la Dame luy dict: O Pyrance, je suis au lict auquel n’est encores avec moy entré aultre que mon antique mary, ne te soit grief, je te prie de destaindre tout premier celuy cierge à ce qu’en nos esbatz et jeux d’Amour la mal convenante Honte ne se vienne interjecter: Pyance plein de chaleur va promptement au cierge pour le destaindre, ou soubdain, chose merveilleuse, il se trouva si empesché que toute nuict il ne cessa de souffler sans se pouvoir oster d’alentour du cierge ardent jusques au jour que ja commencoit l’arrondelle à gazollier et chanter son chant flebile, et gemissant la defortune d’elle et de sa seur advenuë par la cruaulté de Tereus: et que Meridienne reveillée dissimulant une extreme joye qu’elle avoit de la peine du malheureux jeune homme, va dire: «Hay pauvrete que je suis: Si le feu estoit en ma maison esprins, comme je feroys tost secouruë d’ung qui n’a sceu destaindre ung petit cierge.» Pyrance doloreux oultre mesure va respondre: «Ah cruelle amye non du cierge, mais de toy je me treuve empesché: Que si les Dieux nous regardent, et si les offenses ne demeurent impunies, j’espere que de ta cruaulté en raporteras la peine meritée: non aultrement certes que les filles [34v] du Soleil: dont les aulcunes par l’indignation de l’offense et tresjuste Déesse, qui m’avoit icy rendu en ta chambre, transporterent leurs infames (chose abhominable) desirs en l’amour de Taureaux, et aultres bestes plus bruttes.» «Je ne crains point,» respond Meridienne, «celle ta Déesse Venus en ses indignations: ne ja jour de mon vivant luy rendray je l’hommage que les folz abusez humains luy rendent: Va t’en d’icy hors de ma presence lascif impudicque que ma patience vaincuë ne te transmuë en asne, ou aultre forme plus vile.» Adonc l’enchantement faillit, et le

Tales and Trials of Love 135 troublesome suitor. She then put on a happy, welcoming face and, using a tone designed to give him hope, she said to him: “Oh, my most loyal and faithful friend, I have listened to your gentle, daring and amorous prayers. It is because of them that I came to understand the love that you feel for me, and I do not wish to disparage the great pains to which you have gone for me. I am ready to grant you what you seek, my dear friend! Come, rejoice and take pleasure in the sweet fruits of love [34r] that the goddess Venus promises to her humble servants.” Pyrance, rejoicing more than he might had he just been named lord of his very own kingdom, or received the immeasurable wealth of King Croesus, or even if the gods had just granted him his dearest wish (just as they did for King Midas of Phrygia), took off his clothing and moved toward the light as if ready to climb into bed.35 But then the lady said to him: “Oh, Pyrance, I am lying in the bed that I have shared with none other than my ancient husband. Please do not be disturbed, but I beg you first to extinguish that candle so that Shame, that most inconvenient of emotions, might not overcome us in our lovemaking.” Pyrance, warmed by her words, quickly went over to the candle in order to extinguish it, but something mysterious suddenly happened. He found himself compelled to blow continuously at the candle without being able to put out its flame. He blew at the candle all night long until day broke, and the swallow began to warble and sing her sad song, bemoaning her and her sister’s misfortune suffered at Tereus’s cruel hand.36 And when Meridienne rose, concealing the extreme joy that she felt at witnessing the pains of the sad, young man, she said: “Oh, woe is me! If my house were to catch fire, could I possibly be rescued by a man who cannot even put out a little candle?” Pyrance, feeling incredibly dejected, replied: “Oh, my cruel friend, it is not the candle, but you who overcame me. If the gods were witnessing this and still choose not to punish your misdeeds, I do hope that your cruelty will culminate in the pain that you deserve, no different from that of the daughter [34v] of the Sun. Our very just goddess (who brought me here to your room) indignantly punished her cruelty for such an offense: she transformed her depraved desire into a love for bulls and other brutish beasts.”37 “I do not fear,” responded Meridienne, “your goddess Venus, nor her indignation. Nor will I ever in my lifetime pay her homage, as do those other mad, misguided people. Get out of my sight you lustful, imprudent man, before I lose patience and turn you into an ass, or some other, even

136 Comptes amoureux pauvre amoureux las et travaillé du souffler confus s’en retourna en sa maison, ou toute jour ne cessa de se plaindre piteusement, sans boyre ne manger. Las icy, amoureuses compaignes, celle trop infelice dame ignorante des justes punitions que la déesse Venus inflige à cause de l’amour contemné: laquelle pourtant si elle differe ses divins et horribles courroux, c’est à ce qu’enfin elle s’esmuë avecques plus aspre, et cruelle punition de telz inconsules d’espritz. Or Pyrance quelque reffus qu’il eust eu, ayme encores efflictement la dame Meridienne, voyre plus que son ame propre. Car il ne dormoit, ne veilloit que son seul desir ne luy versa profondement en la mémoire: et celle souvenance seule luy servoit de nourriture: comme les affligez de fiebvre la passion et ardeur presque sustante et nourrit. Mais la celle cruelle trop plus rigoureuse que le gelide Boreas, plus fiere et eslevée qu’ung roux lyon de Libie, et amere en toutes ses actions quand à doul[35r] cement reaymer qui l’aymoit, que ne pourroit estre ung ancien et difficile vieillard, se recuilloit tousjours et de plus fort en la haultaineté de sa grande beaulté. Si ne faisoit de qui la cherissoit non plus de compte que si jamais elle ne l’avoit congneu. Toutes aultres doulces et raisonnables prieres dés lors en avant, toutes remonstrances amoureuses envers elle estoient froides et de nul effaict, sans que jamais voulut elle recognoistre à Dame Venus mere d’amour vainqueur des Dieux et des hommes, qui peult soubz sa subjection remettre les plus fors et robustes: qui tormente à son vouloir, et afflige les creatures: qui tient en main son arc bendé, duquel il dissipe et rompt à peu de peine les exercites de ses plus capitaulx ennemis. A brief dire, amoureuses Dames, Meridienne se rendit lors du tout indomptable, et ne daigna aymer ce jeune gentilhomme ne luy donner aulcun peu de consolation, non pas seulement le saluer sinon par faincte et simulé amytié, ou tourner sa veuë vers luy, sinon quand ses yeulx estoient lassez ailleurs. Et jacoit ce qu’il persevera long temps en prieres et lamentations: neantmoins elle ne s’esmouvoit non plus que faict ung ancien et vieil chesne: Lequel mettre par terre contendent les impetueux ventz souflans hydeusement cà et là à l’environ, faisans gros bruyt, et couvrant la terre dessoubz des fueilles de l’arbre esbranlé: iceluy nonobstant demeure ferme debout, et ne faict compte des foibles et vains assaulx, sachant qu’il a sa racine, qu’il le tient ainsi solide, fichée presque jusques [35v] au centre de la terre. Quoy voyant Pyrance ne scavoit plus que devenir

Tales and Trials of Love 137 more vile animal.” But her spell failed, and the poor, lovesick man was weary and spent from having exerted himself so, and he returned to his home, where he spent the rest of his days pitifully mourning his state, without stopping to eat or drink. “Alas, my fellow ladies-in-love, this all-too-unhappy lady was ignorant of the punishments that the goddess Venus justly inflicts on those who condemn love. However, if the goddess chooses to defer her godly, fear-evoking anger, she suspends it only in order to inflict a bitterer, crueler punishment on those woefully rash souls.” Now Pyrance, despite having been shunned, was still tormented by his love for Meridienne. He loved her even more than himself. He could not sleep, and he spent his waking hours thinking of nothing other than his profound desire for her. These thoughts of love sustained him, just as those who suffer from fever find nourishment and sustenance by thinking of their passions and commitments. But that woman’s cruelty was even more chilling than the cold winter air brought by the wind god Boreas;38 she was prouder and haughtier than the lions of Africa, and when it came to that most gentle [35r] of actions—returning the love of an admirer—she was bitterer than an old curmudgeon, and she always staunchly retreated into the comfort of her conceit and great beauty. Thus, she never gave the slightest thought to anyone who claimed to cherish her. From that time on, all requests for her love (regardless of how kind or reasonable) were coldly rejected and completely futile. She never recognized Lady Venus, whose son Cupid was conqueror of both gods and men and capable of rendering into submission even the strongest and most robust. While brandishing a curved bow in hand, he is capable of disarming—and singlehandedly stopping—entire armies of his most formidable enemies. In sum, my fellow ladies-in-love, Meridienne showed herself to be devoid of all feeling and did not deign to love this young gentleman nor to show him the slightest bit of consolation, not even to feign sympathy with a greeting or an acknowledgement by focusing her gaze at him when she had been looking in another direction. And despite this, he long persisted in his prayers and lamentations. Nevertheless, she was as unmoved as an ancient, old oak tree caught amid impetuous winds. While those winds attempt to bring the tree to the ground by gusting horribly all around, generating a great commotion and covering the ground below with leaves from the tousled tree, nonetheless, that tree remains firmly upright, hardly

138 Comptes amoureux pour appaiser l’ardentissime desir, qui le destruisoit par vive impatience. Car quand il venoit à contempler la lueur de ses yeulx, et son visage tant accomply: ou qu’il estoit en lieu ou il peult ouyr sa voix doulce et sonante, il se rejouyssoit par trop. Mais a coup, comme le Paon devient triste et melancolieux à la contemplation de ses piedz imperfaictz, et s’abbat et ruyne la cime de sa joye: se souvenant du rigoureux refuz qu’elle luy avoit faict et faisoit, alors finablement retumboit en ung horrible et hydeux desespoir. Certes chascun prenoit pitié de Pyrance. Car tout ainsi que la beste saulvaige poursuyvie et chassée dens le boys, soigneusement fuyt le veneur demandant sa vie: ainsi la dame se destournoit de Pyrance sans qu’elle luy voulsist, non pas parler: mais n’aussi le regarder en pitié. Parquoy de jour en jour ce pauvre desolé seichoit de fine doleur, et pallissoit de griefve melancolie et courroux. Ses lefvres estoient attenuées, tout le sang luy fuyoit du visaige, et ses yeulx regardans de travers, signifioient ne scay qu’elle occulte raige et fureur en son ame troublée consister. Nonobstant tout ce Meridienne vrayement indigne de si excellente beaulté, ne se soucioit de le veoir perir devant ses yeulx. Mais cruellement se rejouyssoit elle, luy inciter et mouvoir par ung damnable refuser de plus fort ses fureurs, tant estoit elle esloignée de doulce compassion. [36r] [woodcut] Or le dolent et perdu, comme aultres amoureux pour ung dernier et ultime remede respandit de ses yeulx larmes vaines, et perdues. Et certain de mourir, s’en alla devant l’huys du logis de Meridienne, et illec feit ruysseau de nouvelles pleurs: et dolosa sa desfortune et trop puissantes affections, non sans baiser mille foys les huys attestant par le dolent et funeste plaindre la fin derniere de ses malheureux jours. «Puis qu’en mes extremes passions, «disoit il, «et amoureux desirs, tresdure et rigoureuse amye dedans celuy tien cœur de fer, cerchant repos en mon ame bruslée des flambes celestes, qu’on ne peult eviter, doulce pitié et mercy secourable je ne puis retrouver: que je ne puis aussi asseurement venir en ta presence affin de manifester encores une foys le dueil, qui mortellement me presse, à ce donnant empeschement l’inhumaine cruaulté, ou toute tu es plongée, maintenant certain de mourir viens je espandre mes derniers gemissemens, plainctes et execrations à l’huys de ta maison. O doncques femme pour vray non engendrée, non allaictée d’aulcune nourrice humaine: mais plustost

Tales and Trials of Love 139 noticing such feeble, vain assaults, aware that the strength of its roots keeps it solid, firmly [35v] planted in the earth.39 Seeing this, Pyrance did not know how to begin to assuage his most ardent desire; his heightened impatience was destroying him. When he began to contemplate her gleaming eyes and her well-fashioned face, or when he was in sufficient proximity to hear her sweetly singing voice, he greatly rejoiced. But suddenly—just as a peacock contemplating the imperfection of its feet grows sad and melancholy, its former joy having turned to defeat and dejection—on remembering Meridienne’s ruthless rejection, Pyrance fell once and for all into a horrible, dreadful state of despair.40 Everyone took pity on Pyrance, of course, for just as a wild animal pursued and hunted through the wood tries mightily to flee the hunter and preserve its life, so did the countess turn away from Pyrance, for she was loathe to speak to him or even to cast a sympathetic glance his way. This is why, day after day, the poor, dejected, young man grew weak from feeling such acute sadness and grew pale from his great melancholy and misery. His lips grew thin; all the blood had left his face, and his eyes flitted this way and that, hinting at some sort of mysterious madness and fury stirring deep within his troubled soul. Despite all this, Meridienne (who hardly merited her exquisite beauty) was not troubled in the least to see him perish right before her eyes. Rather, she was so entirely devoid of compassion that she cruelly rejoiced and even further incited and provoked his suffering and despair with her continued rejection. [36r] And so, as fitting of one so sick with love, the poor, wretched, lost soul made one last and final effort to heal his suffering by allowing his eyes to brim over with tears, vain and useless though they were. And certain of his imminent death, he went up to the front door of Meridienne’s house, and a new stream of tears began to flow. He lamented his misfortune and overly excessive emotions, but not without showering her door with kisses and announcing his approaching death with a dolorous, mournful cry. “Oh, you arrogant, ruthless woman,” he said, “I came seeking respite for my heart, burned by those inevitable, heavenly flames of desire, but found no sweet salvation nor sympathetic mercy in your ironclad heart. I most assuredly cannot stand in your presence without that mournful feeling that pushes me ever closer to death once again washing over me, although the inhumane cruelty in which you take such pride does impede its progress. Now that I am certain that I will die, I have

140 Comptes amoureux d’une [36v] Lyonne ou tygresse entre les rochers du mont Caucasus, penses tu que desormais je puisse supporter en mon ame affligée les ardeurs de ton funeste et malheureux amour? Non certes: car je me vouldray ores absenter loing hors de ta veneneuse veuë, et si descenderay aux bas enfers, ou habitent Espritz sans nombre: et là ou Lethe fleuve hydeux et noir flotte et prent son cours au gros soulagement et refrigere des infortunez Amans. Moy doncques estant là, que tu le scaches femme rigoureuse, ne me pourras tu plus empoisonner de la poison de tes yeulx et de ce, dont je ne me suis peu deffendre estant en vie finablement la mort me delivrera. Mais, las moy, A quoy dissimule je tant icy? A quelles plus grandes infelicitez me vois je reservant? N’a elle print pitié de mon ruissellant et langoureux pleurer? N’a elle pas vaincuë accompaignie ces miennes larmes d’amoureuse pitié? Considere quelle est mon affection: Que crieray je desormais? Ou suis-je dolent infortuné? O Venus puissance celeste, et vous Amour vindicateur des offenses, ou sont vos embrasemens et dars? N’aurez vous point pitié de cestuy pauvre affligé? De cestuy contemné? Maintenant és puissances du ciel n’a aulcun secours. Las j’ay voluntairement obey, j’ay ainsi qu’ilz m’ont esmeu, celle cruelle suyvie. Et pour la mienne diligente amour, ores je n’en rapporte que tristesse, dueil, et grief ennuy. Or bien cruelle, aymes en ung aultre: joues toy par amours avec luy: saoulle ton desir en la fruition de sa personne tant qu’il te plaira, car [37r] j’espere que si les puissances eternes ont quelque povoir, que tu rapporteras la peine meritée de tes refus: et si souvent reclameras le nom de l’amy refusé. Quant est de moy, cruelle, je te suivray par tout, t’espouventant en diverses facons de feuz noïrs et hydeux, apres que ceste dolente ame sera separée du corps. Adonc, meschante femme, seras tu punie de tes cruelz et improbes crimes et m’en resjouyray. Le desolé se teut: et revolvant dedans soy la pallide mort qui desja le hastoit devint sans couleur: non aultrement que le Criminel devant le Juge qui luy prononce la derniere sentence. Apres pource que de nature ont craint d’abandonner la vie, fut surprint d’une grande paour, qui luy causa une trembleur telle qu’on veoit aux arbres par le soufflement des vents. Mais ne povant nature ce corps ja debilité de griefves langueurs retenir plus en vie, luy jecte ses yeulx troublez et maculez de sang vers la fenestre, ou plusieurs foys avoit en joye contemplé sa cruelle amye, et lors augmenterent és veynes ses douleurs. Parquoy

Tales and Trials of Love 141 come here to your doorstep to make heard my last laments, cries, and complaints. Oh woman, could you possibly have been born and nurtured by a human mother? Or do you come rather [36v] from the crags of the Caucasus where a lioness or tigress raised you?41 Do you still believe that my afflicted soul can withstand the ardor of my woeful, unfortunate love for you? Certainly not, for I now intend to flee from your poisonous gaze and thus will descend into the depths of hell, where throngs of spirits live, and where that repulsive, black river Lethe flows and rushes to the great comfort and consolation of unfortunate lovers.42 And know this, you ruthless woman: while I am there you will no longer be able to poison me with the venom of your eyes.43 Although I was not able to defend myself in life, death will free me from your influence. Oh, woe is me! What am I doing? From what great misfortune am I trying to protect myself? Did she take pity on me when seeing me languish in a river of tears? Did she respond to my tears with loving mercy? Did she take notice of my affection for her? Why, then, am I crying? Or am I a wretched, unfortunate soul? Oh, Venus, with your heavenly powers, and Cupid, who avenges those who offend love, why do you not comfort me or come to my aid? Do you have no pity for this poor, afflicted soul? For this poor, condemned young man? All the powers in heaven now do nothing to help me. Alas, I obeyed with good will, and when they encouraged me, I pursued that cruel woman. And the recompense for my diligence in love is sadness, grief, and the greatest of troubles. And now, you cruel woman, may you fall in love with someone else and play your games with him. Seek to fulfill your desire for as long as he pleases you, for [37r] if there is any justice in heaven, you will receive due punishment for your past rejection of me, and you will call out the name of the lover who will refuse you. As for me, you cruel woman, I will follow you everywhere once my mournful soul has left my body, revolting you in various ways with the hideous, black flames of hell. And so, you mean woman, may you be punished for your cruel and shameful crimes. In that, I will rejoice.” The desolate young man grew silent and, ashen from death whose throes were thrashing through his soul and hastening his departure, he became completely pale, just as does a criminal before the judge who pronounces his final verdict. Since everyone is naturally afraid of leaving this life, Pyrance was then overcome by a great fear, which caused his body to tremble like a tree overcome by the whistling of winds. But his

142 Comptes amoureux eust le cœur si estrainst, qu’a peine peult il ces derniers motz prononcer: «O vous esperitz, qui avez ca sus aultresfois sentu qu’elle peine et angoisseux travail, c’est d’aymer qui ne veult doulcement reaymer, plaise vous recepvoir en vostre compaignie ma dolente ame, laquelle maintenant ira soubz terre prendre repos eternel de ses dures afflictions. Se me sembloit, j’avoys heureusement commencé mes amours, et choisi Dame la plus debonnaire, qui fut aujour-[37v]d’huy vivante, si rigueur et orgueil yssant de celle sa funeste beaulté, ne luy eussent autant esté propres qu’elle à esté esloignée de grace et pitie. Je l’ay doulcement priée et elle par son refuz m’a mise la mort au cœur. O moy heureux! Ò moy, dis je, trop heureux si jamais telle beaulté mes yeulx n’eussent point apperceuë? La se pasme le desolé Pyrance: puis revenu à soy, va dire à voix foible et basse: «Helas mourons nous ainsi sans que juste vengeance s’ensuyve de nostre mort advancée? Mais ores sans differer laissons nostre esprit aller ou ses dures destinées l’attirent. Ainsi nous plaist il de devaller soubz les espaisses tenebres de mort. Aumoins dieux immortelz faictes que la cruelle demain icy voye ce corps sans ame: et qu’elle emporte quant et soy maulvais presage de mon trespas.» Cela dit le cœur d’angoisse et douleur luy fendit dens le ventre: et l’ame se debatant à l’issir le malheureux s’efforca troys foys pour cuyder se dresser en seant, et par troys foys retumba pasmé: et errant avec les yeulx au Ciel, cerchoit de veoir encores la lumiere, laquelle veuë, larmoya: et se partant l’ame du corps affligé de trop long travail, mourut illec piteusement rendant l’ame és mains de la déesse Venus, qui la porta en son temple d’Idalion, comme elle luy avoit promis.

Tales and Trials of Love 143 body could not hold onto life, for it was already debilitated by his great agony. He cast disturbed, bloodshot eyes toward the window where he often had enjoyed contemplating his cruel beloved, and this only sent further pains coursing through his veins. He felt such discomfort in his heart that he was scarcely able to pronounce these last words: “Oh, heavenly spirits, you who have often witnessed others here on Earth experience the painful, agonizing turmoil of unrequited love, I beg you to receive my poor soul among you, for it now will be placed into the ground in order to find eternal peace from its terrible afflictions. I could have fallen happily in love, having chosen the sweetest lady who now walks this Earth [37v], if only her deadly beauty had not provoked her to hold onto the faults of ruthlessness and arrogance as fervently as she avoids the qualities of grace and mercy. I gently begged her to accept me, and her rejection was the death of me. Oh, how happy I could have been! Oh, I do so wonder how happy I could have been if I had never set eyes on her beauty!” At that, poor Pyrance collapsed, but then came to and said in a weak, nearly inaudible voice: “Alas, must we die thusly without receiving just vengeance for the hastening of our death? But now, let us quickly allow our spirit to go where destiny calls it, for it pleases us to descend down into the thick shadows of death. Oh immortal gods, make it at least so that the cruel woman may see my lifeless body here tomorrow and that from my passing she carries with her an auspicious warning.” That said, his heart, spent from his pain and sorrow, stopped in his chest, and with his soul eager to be released from his body, the poor young man tried three times to sit up, and three times he collapsed on the ground. His eyes searched the sky for light, and once he saw it he cried out. And then he died, pitifully placing his soul, afflicted from its too lengthy turmoil, into the hands of the goddess Venus, who carried it to her temple at Idalium as she had promised him.44

144 Comptes amoureux Comment Pyrance fut trouvé mort estendu devant la porte de Meridienne. [38r]

[woodcut]

Sur le matin le bruyct soubdain vola par toute la ville de Mison comment le filz du Conte Dragonet avoit esté trouvé mort estendu devant l’huys du logys de la dame Meridienne. Adonc vous eussiez veu de toutes pars accourir le Peuple pour veoir ce qu’estoit advenu. Les ungs en ploroient de pitié, les aultres levoient le corps sus une table illec apportée: brief amoureuses compaignes, vous eussiez ouy le Ciel à l’entour en resonner, tant estoit de celle mort immaturée tout le monde mal content. Comme si la ville estoit prinse d’assault des ennemys et mise à sac. Ou comme si le feu estoit esprint es temples de leurs Dieux et par les maisons voisines. Meridienne tirée dehors par le tumulte et bruyct que se faisoit aux environs de sa maison, veu le miserable corps de Pyrance de riens ne s’esmeult pour celuy, dont elle se scavoit avoir esté tendrement aymée, sinon que la superbe et impiteable femme au commun dueil de tous, receupt [38v] en son cœur joye extreme, pourtant qu’a la divine beaulté se sacrifient de plein gré les malheureux hommes. Et que ses honneurs se luy estoit advis, estoient egaulx avec ceulx de la Déesse Venus. Ainsi s’esjouyssoit la Dame, tant estoit elle eslongnée de doulce compassion, elle n’en jecta aulcunes larmes pour le spectacle doloreux de si estrange et novelle mort. Ains avec grande multitude de gentilz hommes et damoiselles de sa maison, s’en alloit à face riante vers le Palais d’une sienne belle sœur. Mais (ò chose merveilleuse et espoventable!) advint qu’elle passa par devant le temple de la grande Venus, ou à l’endroit des portiques y avoit une statue d’icelle Déesse faicte de Marbres ayant à costé son jeune filz Cupido tenant son arc doré, et au col pendu son carquoy ou sont les sagettes causant l’amour. Or comme jadis en l’ost et exercite des Grecz tenant le siege à Troie l’ymaige de Minerve qu’on appelloit Palladion, monstra par signes evidens l’indignation que la Déesse portoit contre les Troiens, premierement veirent les Grecz en la mute statue les yeulx rouges et enflambez comme feu: apres on la veit suer par tout le corps: et par troy fois le marbre blanc en fureur et raige (cas esmerveillable) s’eslever, et

Tales and Trials of Love 145 How Pyrance Was Found Dead Lying across Meridienne’s Doorstep. [38r] In the morning, news travelled quickly throughout the entire town of Mison about how the son of Count Dragonet was found lying dead on the doorstep of Lady Meridienne’s house. And then you could see people from all over running to see what had happened. Some cried out in pity; others spread the body on a table that they had brought for him. All in all, my fellow ladies-in-love, everyone was so unhappy about this untimely death that you could have heard the commotion resonating in the heavens above. One would have thought that the city had been attacked by enemies and ransacked. Or that a fire had started in the temples of their gods and spread to neighboring houses. All the tumult and commotion drew Meridienne outside to see what was happening around her house; she saw Pyrance’s miserable body and not only did she feel nothing for him (although she knew that he had greatly loved her), but that haughty and insensitive woman thoroughly rejoiced [38v] in her heart on seeing this communal mourning, regardless of the fact that her enchanting beauty was the root cause of so many poor men’s suffering. She believed that homage was due her, homage rivaling that paid to the goddess Venus. And thus the lady rejoiced. She was so devoid of compassion that she shed not a single tear for the sad and strange spectacle carried out for the man who had just died. Then, accompanied by a number of gentlemen and ladies of her household, she ran off to her sister-in-law’s home, laughing. But—and this is something truly marvelous and stunning!—it so happened that she passed by the gate of the goddess Venus’s temple, where there is a marble statue of the goddess with her young son Cupid at her side holding a golden bow and with a quiver of those arrows that inspire love hanging from his neck. And then something happened similar to what happened long ago to the troops and armies of the Greeks laying siege to Troy. A statue of Minerva known as the Palladium demonstrated to them the goddess’s indignation for the Trojans.45 First, the Greeks saw the statue’s eyes grow red as fire. Then, they saw perspiration all over its body. Thirdly, the white marble statue rose up (truly a marvel)

146 Comptes amoureux brandissant le glayve qu’elle tenoit en sa dextre main feit hydeusement cliquetter tout son harnoys: ne plus ne moins on veist par telz visibles signes en la statuë de Venus à l’approcher de Meridienne que la Déesse estoit merveilleusement irritée de la mort [39r] de son bon serviteur Pyrance. Parquoy elle considerant que Meridienne estoit malle et superbe, et que toute sa vie avoit irriverentement contemné la puissance d’amours: divinement va sa dicte statuë esbranler, et tresbucha sus la teste de celle qui passoit. Dont sentit alors telle angoisse que feit le Gean Enceledus soubzmys à la montaigne d’Etna en Sicile. La miserable femme vosmissant son ame avant temps à peine dict morante: Tresjustement me punit la Déesse De mon orgueil, qui ay faict en detresse, Et grief ennuy mon doulx amy mourir: Dames, vueillez les vostres secourir, Ou aultrement, de ce soyez certaines, En recepvrez, comme moy, telles peines.

Deploration de la mort du pauvre Pyrance, et comment le corps de Meridienne feut dissipè des bestes. [woodcut] Meridienne malle et impiteable dame ne peult dire plus avant par ce qu’il luy convient là [39v] mourir sans remede ainsi qu’elle avoit bien merité. Depuis les nobles Misoniennes, lesquelles en veirent l’issuë, ne se trouverent si superbes: ains se desadvencerent de retirer du pas de l’horrible mort leurs intimes amys, en partie pource que c’est chose louable que d’aymer celluy de qui on est aymée, en partie affin de ne tumber en l’inconvenient de celluy, qui en avoit apres receu la punition. Le corps de Pyrance, qui estoit de grosse et noble maison fut prins et fut publicquement par neufz jours pleuré du peuple: et luy fut faict une statuë au marché pres le temple de Venus en perpetuelle memoire de son ardent Amour. Mais le corps de la femme de Giroante fut jetté aux champs pour estre devoré des bestes: et ce par la sentence de toutes les Amoureuses Damoiselles de Mison. Or le deschyrement

Tales and Trials of Love 147 and, brandishing the sword that she held in her right hand, she furiously rattled her armor. The signs that the statue of Venus demonstrated when Meridienne approached were no less impressive and made known that the goddess was terribly irritated by the death [39r] of her faithful servant Pyrance. Believing Meridienne to be evil and haughty and aware that she had irreverently scoffed at the power of love, for this reason Venus employed her celestial powers to make the statue tremble and tumble atop the head of the woman crossing its path. Meridienne’s resulting pain was as great as that of the giant Enceladus, trapped underneath Mount Etna in Sicily.46 The miserable woman vomited up her soul and barely had the time to say before dying: “Venus has punished me, and rightly so, For causing, through my arrogance, great woe: The grievous, troubled death of my sweet lover. Ladies, be sure to give your loves safe cover Or else you will receive, most certainly, Such suffering as now has come to me.” Deploration of the Death of Poor Pyrance, and How Meridienne’s Body Was Torn Apart by Animals.47 That evil and insensitive woman Meridienne could say nothing further, for it was her fate to die there [39v] just as she deserved. Since then, not a single Misonian noblewoman who had witnessed the event dared to behave so haughtily. Indeed, they did all they could to prevent their intimate friends from meeting such a horrible death, in part so as to avoid the fate of those who are punished for such a crime. Pyrance’s body was taken, displayed publicly and mourned for nine days, for he hailed from a great and noble family, and a statue was erected at Venus’s temple to honor his passionate love. But the body of Giroante’s wife was thrown in the fields and devoured by wild animals, and this was on the decree of all the ladies-in-love of Mison. Now, the dismembering and tearing apart of that wretched body was a hideous and truly horrific sight, for thousands of dogs suddenly gathered around the body, dogs quite similar to the one that the King of Albania gave to Alexander the Great: ravenous, their fur standing on

148 Comptes amoureux et laniation du deplorable corps estoit hydeux et trop espoventable à regarder. Car incontinent à l’entour furent assemblez plus de mille chiens telz dont feit present le Roy d’Albanie à Alexandre le grand, affamez, de poil herissez, abayans de bouillans et horribles abboys: pour saouller et repaistre leur vuide ventre. Aussi tous les loups de la region y accoururent en la sorte que le grand chien Cerberus à troys testes se mect en avant sur le sueil de la porte d’Enfer affin d’engloutir les ames que conduict le vieillard et sordide Charon en sa rimeuse barque. Pareillement y survint ung gros nombre de Corbeaux, Millans, et Voultours, lesquelles de premiere entrée luy mengerent les [40r] yeulx escaichés et plein de sang. Las c’estoit voyrement droicte pitié de contempler sa face deschirée aux griphes des cruelz et furieux animaulx, et les cheveux de son chief froissez, arrachez, et souillez de sang entremeslé de pouldriere et ordure non certes aultrement que ceulx de Euphorbus Troien dont si piteusement se lamente le divin Aveuglé en son Illiade. Et le polly et resplendissant veis naguieres revestu de couleur vive et vermeille apparoissoit terny, de la couleur de la propre mort, et ne differoit aux pallides umbres versans en la nuict profunde d’Erebus. Briefvement, Dames amoureuses: le corps de Meridienne en ung instant fut mis en pieces, si que riens d’icelle n’apparut que tout ne fut ensepvely en la panse des bestes pleines de famine. O spectacle certes d’incredible amertume, et de cruaulté execrable! Ò calamité avant ces jours non ouye! O punition cruellement estrange! O theatre au veoir horrible, au considerer hydeux, d’endurer et souffir espoventable! Et qu’on doibt par tous moyens fuyr et eschever en non offensant les puissances celestes et justes! O l’horrible manière de sepulture! Que vous diray je plus cheres amyes. Tant fut indignée la Déesse contre l’irreverente Dame, qu’elle mesme visiblement descendit du ciel en terre, et de ses propres mains repeut les despiteux et furibonds animaulx du miserable corps mis en mille pieces: et ainsi saoulloit ses yeulx offensez à veoir les enragez Gryphons taindre leurs pattes dans le sang vermeil de son enne[40v]mye, et les puantes Arpies plonger leurs ongles és entrailles arrachées et discipés. Davantaige pour plus grande vindicte, transforma elle les gentilz hommes et Damoiselles de Meridienne les ungs en bestes, les aultres en rochiers, les aultres en arbres, et les aulcuns fonduz comme neige à l’ardeur du Soleil, prindrent leurs cours continuel dans l’Ocean père des vents, et furent convertiz en fleuves.

Tales and Trials of Love 149 end, they barked fiercely and horribly, for they were drunk with desire to fill their empty bellies.48 All of the wolves in the area also ran to see what was happening, a sight that called to mind the great three-headed dog Cerberus, who guards the gates of Hell in order to devour the souls brought by nasty, old Charon on his shallow, open boat.49 Likewise, a great number of crows, kites, and vultures turned up, who quickly devoured [40r] her dried-up, blood-shot eyes. Alas, it was truly a pitiful sight to see her face torn apart by the claws of such cruel and fierce animals, and the hair on her head, disheveled, torn out and damp with a mixture of blood, dust, and filth, just as was the Trojan Euphorbus, whose plight the great blind minstrel laments in his Iliad.50 And Meridienne’s smooth, resplendent complexion, once flush, healthy, and rosy, grew dark, the color of death itself and evoked Erebus’s pallid shadows that lurk in the darkest depths of night. “In other words, my fellow ladies-in-love, Meridienne’s body was instantly torn to pieces, and not one of those pieces escaped the intense famine of those animals; indeed everything ended up in their paunches. Oh, what an incredibly harsh, appallingly cruel spectacle! Such a calamity has never before been heard of! What a strangely cruel punishment! What a horrible sight to see, a hideous display; what a despicable turmoil to suffer and endure! From this may we learn that we must take any means necessary to avoid and circumvent such a fate by never offending those just and heavenly powers! Oh, what a terrible way to meet one’s death! What more can I say, my dear friends?” The goddess was so angered by that irreverent woman that she even descended from the heavens down to Earth in order to feed those angry, raging animals that dismembered, wretched body with her own hands, and in so doing her insulted eyes delighted in seeing those gryphons stain their paws with the red blood of her enemy [40v] and the stinking Harpies plunge their nails into the entrails that were strewn about.51 Moreover, to make her vengeance all the more intense, she transformed Meridienne’s gentlemen- and ladies-in-waiting into an assortment of animals, stones, trees, and even caused some to melt like the snow under the sun’s warmth, coursing with the rivers to join Oceanus, the father of the winds.52 And thus, the lady who used her beauty wrongly met an unfortunate death, and her wretched life came to an end.

150 Comptes amoureux Ainsi fina malheureusement sa dolente vie la Dame à la beaulté mal employée. Dont pouvez clairement ores cognoistre, cheres amyes, quel gros peché se commet contre le vray amour, si nous qui ne tenons les nostres felicitez d’aultre que de sa beneficence et bonté, venons ingrattement à despriser ceulx qu’ilz adresse pour nous aymer et cherir. Icy fine mon compte tel qu’il est veritablement jadiz advenu. Dont vous madame Meduse povez par loysir maintenant dire qu’il vous semble de la force du vray Amour: et presentement vous declairer si vous voulez suyvre madame Cebille en celle sienne improbe et trop deraisonnable action. Fin du deuxiesme Compte Amoureux.

Tales and Trials of Love 151 “From this story, you can now clearly see, my dear friends, what a great sin we commit against Cupid if we do not give his benevolence and bounty the credit it deserves for our every happiness. We must not ungratefully reject those whom he proposes that we love and cherish. Here ends my tale, told according to how it truly happened. Madame Meduse, you may take your time to explain whether you believe that my tale illustrates the power of Cupid and then state whether you wish to follow Madame Cebille in her outrageous and all-too-inappropriate reasoning.” Here ends the second Tale of Love.

152 Comptes amoureux [41r] COMPTE TROYSIESME

d’une Dame en beaulté excellente, qui feust ingrate à ses Amants. [woodcut] Madame Meduse sur ce poinct que la dame Andromeda meist fin à son parler, se dressa, et avec une decente mode feminine, là ou l’on povoit facilement percepvoir que vray Amour avoit en son profond cœur allumé l’ung de ses delicieux, et chaleureux flambeaux, obtint silence de la compaignie: apres avec voix distincte et doulcement sonante va ainsi prendre la parolle: Combien que suffisamment, cheres et amoureuses compaignes, par ma dame Andromeda vous avez entendu et cogneu que non seulement il n’appartient, et n’est honneste aux jeunes femmes, mais ne aussi assez prudentement besoigné de recalcitrer aux premiers mouvemens de l’Amour vainqueur des Dieux et des hommes: et que par la deduction de ses raisonnables, apparens et vrays propos elle a pleinement (comme je cuyde) la folle opinion de [41v] madame Cebille confonduë: neantmoins, puis que nous sommes venues en nostre renc d’interposer quelle chose sur ce nous en sentons, liberement sans craincte avoir des malles mesdisances des iniques ennemys d’Amour devant vostre noble consistoire je diray à deux motz par ung petit compte advenu mesme en ceste ville, qu’il n’est seurement faict, ny de bon sens de rejecter improbement ceulx, qui de tout leur cœur nous ayment par le vouloir et commandement du vray Amour. La punition que la Déesse Venus print de la maulvaise et impiteable Contesse Meridienne veritablement fut horrible et espoventable, quand encores vous toutes icy moult eslongnées du temps, que cela advint, escoutant la narration, vous a surprinses ne scay quelle soubdaine paour. Donc affin cheres compaignes, que ne vous pertroubliez (car je diray, et vous remettray en mémoire chose horrende et terrible devant vos yeulx) chascun de vous se conferme à l’audience par la consideration qu’il n’y a icy celle de vous qui ayt jamais le vray Amour pervicacement ou de faict advisé offendu: mais plustost vacqué de tout vostre cueur à son service, tellement qu’il n’y a celuy de vos aymez, qui en osa faire plaincte et lamenter, sinon à tort. Cheres et amoureuses Dames, ja a longtemps y eust en ceste

Tales and Trials of Love 153 [41r] TALE THREE Of a Very Beautiful Lady Who Was Ungrateful to Her Suitors. Once Madame Andromeda had finished speaking, Madame Meduse rose to her feet, allowing all to see quite well that Cupid had set her heart ablaze with one of his deliciously warm flames.1 And once she had obtained full silence from her audience (in a most gracious and feminine manner), she then began to speak in a deliberate and sweetly singing voice: “My dear, fellow ladies-in-love, you heard ample evidence and should understand from Madame Andromeda’s tale that it is not only unseemly, but also dishonest and rather imprudent for young women to evade Cupid, for it is within his power to conquer both gods and men. I certainly believe that her sensible, lucid, and factual statements sufficiently disprove Madame Cebille’s foolish stance [41v]. Nevertheless, since we have gathered together in order to discuss freely how we feel about her opinion and to weigh its truth (without the slightest concern for those immoral falsehoods that one hears from Cupid’s vicious enemies), I will say a few words (by means of a little tale that actually happened in this very city) about how it is neither seemly nor wise to reject or dishonor a sincere offer of love. Indeed, it is Cupid’s will and commandment to honor such a gift. “The countess Meridienne was so terribly insensitive that the goddess Venus imposed on her a truly horrible and despicable punishment. Since all of you here are far removed from the time when that happened, you were suddenly overcome with an overwhelming fear on hearing the tale. Thus, my dear ladies-in-love, in order to avoid similar troubles in your own life (for I will tell a story that you will find so horrendous and terrible that it will stick in your memory), I advise each and every one of you to do the following. None of you must ever—either intentionally or unintentionally—offend Cupid. Rather, apply yourselves passionately to his service, to the point that not one of your suitors would dare to complain or bemoan his fate, unless he were to do so mistakenly.” My dear ladies-in-love, once upon a time long, long ago a young lady from a noble and wealthy family lived in this town, and she was just as very beautiful as any one of you. Indeed, she was considerably renowned

154 Comptes amoureux ville une jeune Damoiselle tresbelle de corps comme l’une de vous aultres, de noble et riche maison, de grande renomée par le merite de sa beaulté qui couroit loing et pres, la jeune fille dés sa naissance fut delicieuse-[42r]ment avec grande solicitude nourrie de ses parens. Et enseignée en tous genres d’estude feminin de manière qu’en bien dire elle surpassoit Hortensia Romaine: en Poësie la noyrette Sapho: en bien chanter et jouer du leut le filz d’Apollo, et les Sereines: à bailer et dancer Hebe la jeune fille de Juno. Aussi s’il eust convenu dresser une contention de tiltre, et besogner de l’esguille ja n’eust elle esté vaincuë, ne receu la peine de l’arrogante Arachnes: avec ce que és aultres actes comme en ceulx icy, de sa jeunesse estoit tant advenante et propre, que chascun venoit à s’en esmerveiller. En ses accoustremens exquise et nette, sumptueuse, elegante, studieuse, comme celle qui avoit esté receuë entre les bracs de l’opulent et heureux Plutus. Donc elle se retrouvant en l’aage florissante qui a de coustume d’arrester, surprende, et attirer mesmes les Dieux celestes et souverains, fut de plusieurs jeunes et beaulx hommes requise de son amour: et mesmement entre aultres de deux esgaulx en beaulté, gentilesse de maison, bonne grace, et de constante poursuyte: pareilz, dis je, en mesme solicitude de l’avoir. Or elle apres grandes et larges promesses, après importunes prieres et lamentations d’Amours, jamais ne voulut fleschir la haultaineté de son cœur endurcy, tousjours perseverant de se plaire et glorifier en ses improbes refuz. Si advint cheres et amoureuses Dames, que la pauvre mal advisée consuma la plus part de ses florissants jours, et que sa verdoiante jeunesse fut, ne scay comment, certes plus que pauvrement et malheureusement despen-[42v]duë, sans considerer que la chose plus heureuse et amyable de ce monde, c’est de convenir en esgualité d’Amour adolescente. Que je ne le face long, elle coucha seulette chargée de celle faulse erreur d’esprit en son lict froid et non accompaignée jusques à l’an vingt huictiesme de son aage, que Cupido Dieu d’Amours non ayant mis en oubly l’irreverence que celle luy portoit, plain d’aspre et bouillant courroux, et implacable reprint en main son fort arc, et enfoncé avecques grande fureur va descocher une poignante sagette ayant le fer d’or fulgurant sur ce cœur marbrin, surperbe, saulvaige, et contumax, lequel y penetra cruellement jusques aux empenons. Par ce moyen escheut que le puissant Amour campegeant au meillieu de l’enflamblé estomach, la dame de ses feuz

Tales and Trials of Love 155 for her beauty, both far and wide. From the moment of her birth, [42r] the young lady’s parents raised her with indulgence and attention. And she was instructed in all manners of subjects befitting a young woman—to the point that in speech she excelled beyond Hortensia, the Roman orator; in poetry, beyond the dark-headed Sappho; in singing and lute-playing, beyond the son of Apollo or the Sirens; in flattery and dancing, beyond Hebe, Juno’s daughter.2 Whether a situation required highly skilled rhetoric or the most delicate needlework, she had never failed at any of her undertakings, nor had she ever been reproached for arrogance as had Arachne.3 From a very young age, she had always been very seemly and well-mannered in all of her actions, so much so that many came to admire her. Her clothing was exquisite, impeccable, sumptuous, elegant, and smart, as if the opulent and joyful Plutus had taken her into his arms.4 Thus, when she had reached that age when young women tend to blossom and become able to capture, surprise, and seduce even the loftiest gods and sovereigns, several handsome, young men wished to court her. Among other suitors, she was pursued chiefly and persistently by two men of equal beauty, social status, and refinement. I might add that they were alike even in the care that they took to win her over. But despite gracious and lavish promises, despite urgent prayers and expressions of love, her prideful, hard heart was unbending. She was always steadfastly gloating and took pride in her brazen refusals. And so it came to pass, my dear ladies-in-love, that this poor, ill-advised young woman wasted the greater part of her youth and prosperity. I know not why, but it was spent in a sad, regrettable manner [42v], without any consideration for that one thing in this world that can result in the greatest happiness and pleasure: to experience that sweet love of one’s youth. To make a long story short, until the age of twenty-eight, she suffered the pain of sleeping alone in her cold, empty bed, night after night, until Cupid (he had not forgotten her prior irreverence and was full of a bitter, raging, unappeasable anger) took up his strong bow and launched a sharp arrow—its golden tip glimmering like a bolt of lightning—into that haughty, savage, and obstinate heart of stone. The entire length of the arrow—right down to its feathers—pierced viciously into her heart. It was in this manner that Cupid used his power to set up camp within the lady’s heart, a heart burning with desire. She began to feel her innermost, hidden secrets smolder in her breast, as if she had a deep,

156 Comptes amoureux secretz et cachez commenca à brusler d’une terrible sorte comme celle qui tant profondement fut playée de playe attroce, incogneuë, et que encores rejoincte en cicatrice, la douleur s’en povoit resentir, de facon que des esguillons ardens d’Amour efforcée, et travaillée impatiemment soubz l’inaccoustumé mords et frein commence à peril en languissant: et souhaicte ores à tard les doulces prieres passées espandues en vain par les jeunes et vertueulx adolescens. Desja Amour justement usant de ses convenables violences, aspres en elle plus qu’on ne pourroit penser, de luy mesmes de jour en jour se hastoit, et augmentoit. Et ayant faict de ce cœur miserable une droicte fornaise embrasée, non seulement la contraignoit à desirer les accole[43r]mens des jeunes et beaux hommes qui l’avoient par le passé priée, mais d’impatiente luxure à peine se contenoit de soliciter les hommes vilz, et d’abjecte condition sans respect. Elle de grace special les eust voulut tenir en sa couche secrette pour aulcunement satier ses concupiscences chaleureuses et pruriantes. Et pense que si ung noir et hideux Egiptien, ou bien ung laid Etiopien se fut à elle presenté, qu’elle ne l’eust aulcunement refusé, ains accomply toutes ses demandes et desirs. Finablement la noble matrone excessivement amoureuse, languissante, exagitée en la chaleur des haultes flammes, esguillonnée des illecebres desirs, et de pruriants appetitz, de lascive intemperée incrediblement commeuë, comme si de Lays Chorintienne fille, elle eust retenu aussi sa complexion libidineuse, ne povant plus supporter telles oppressions, dolente et esperduë cheut au lict malade. Ses parens y accoururent meutz de naturelle pitié en gros nombre cherchans par tous moiens de cognoistre la cause de son mal, et celuy lever du corps prosterné. Si advint que l’industrie des expers medecins, (comme jadiz Antiochus filz de Selenche estant oultre mesure amoureux de sa maratre cheut par ce moyen en mortelle langueur, fut l’origine de sa maladie descouverte par Herasistratus medecin en tastant le poulx du patient s’en yssant et entrant la reyne) par telle mesme voye cogneurent que la dame accouchoit malade par excessif amour, languissante et quasi hors de son sens. Dont advisez de ce son père et sa mere af-[43v]fin qu’ilz ne perdissent par immaturée mort leur unique fille, trouverent opportun et brief remede de la marier. La besogne fut hastée, et promise et fiancée en peu de jours la Damoiselle à ung riche Citoien, de bonne condition, et riche: mais vieulx et ja caduc: et parvenu à la doubteuse aage,

Tales and Trials of Love 157 atrocious, inexplicable wound that continued to cause her pain even after having healed and formed a scar. She felt as though Cupid’s burning-hot arrows had worked their way into her very core. Brutally spent and suffering greatly (for she was unaccustomed to this gnawing annoyance), she was not long for this life, and although it was too late, she began to long for the sweet nothings that those decent, young men had vainly whispered in her ear. Cupid already had begun exercising his most just and appropriate punishments (indeed, she felt his wrath more bitterly than one can imagine), but with each day he quickened the pace and intensity. And once he had made a veritable smoldering furnace of her miserable heart, not only did he force her to yearn for the embrace [43r] of those handsome young men who had once pursued her, but to do so with such a ferocious desire that she could scarcely refrain from soliciting the affections of even the most vile, dishonorable men of abject condition. She would have offered most any man special favors to join her secretly in her bed in order to assuage even somewhat her burning, nagging desire. Suffice it to say that she would have refused no one, as long as he could satisfy her demands and sexual appetite—even a hideous, dark-complexioned Egyptian, or an unattractive Ethiopian. Once a highly eligible bride and now a spinster, she finally became completely bed-ridden. She was unable to withstand her current state of suffering and torment, a state brought on by her excessive desire and complicated by the scorching heat of those tumultuous, unwieldy flames. Those very flames of desire incensed her. Her appetite became insatiable, and her lust grew so incredibly untempered that one might have thought she had inherited her libido from Lais, the Corinthian courtesan.5 Many of her family members came to her bedside and, moved by a natural pity and hoping to help her out of bed, sought to determine the cause of her affliction. And so it happened that the most skilled doctors applied themselves to treating the lady’s bedridden state: a sickness caused by an excessive, agonizing desire and resulting in the complete loss of her inhibitions. (Long ago this also happened to Antiochus, son of Seleucus, who was hopelessly in love with his stepmother. His suffering ultimately proved fatal, but the physician Erasistratus discovered its cause by observing the patient’s pulse in the presence and absence of his stepmother. This lady’s doctors did the same.)6 After learning the cause of her ailment, [43v] her father and mother quickly arranged

158 Comptes amoureux et aulcunement luy estoient pendentes les joues, les yeulx ulcerez et rouges, les mains tremblantes, l’haleyne puante et fetide, le chef cliné vers terre, si qu’il proporement sembloit avoir l’eschine d’ung chien rongneux: et son saye par devant estoit tout vilainement embavé: brief toute sa belle vertu estoit de penser à l’Avarice comme souverainement intentif à l’instatiable cupidité d’avoir.

[woodcut] Comment ladicte dame fut mariée à ung vieillard, et se voyant punie de son ingratitude se deffist d’ung cousteau. [44r] Or estant venu le funeste jour des espousaille, et le malheureux Hymeneus dieu des nopces, comparu, fut celebré l’estroict lien de mariage, en grosse pompe et feste, vint aussi finablement la nuict que la Dame avoit tant desirée, et attenduë: en laquelle elle fermement croyant que l’heure estoit de destaindre ses allumez appetiz, ne considera poinct avec quel party avoit de besongner. Dont à ce poinct la en vain esmeuë, et couverte d’effrené desir, seulement tachoit à la perception du fruict du delicieux mariaige: et oultre mesure en l’appetit de luxure, se coucha aupres de son froid et impotent vieillard. Et mise entre ses bras, plus enflambée que l’honneur ne deust permettre, et d’incontinente, et mordicante concupiscence pleine excitoit mille moyens d’amours, par ce que Cupido qu’elle avoit offendu, augmentoit l’embrasement, plus que ne faict le soufflet ung petit feu en la forge du mareschal. Mais en fin n’eust elle aultre par sa malle adventure, fors que son flegmatique vieillard luy bava dessus sa venuste face, et vermeille bouche: si qu’on eust dict qu’une lymace avoit trassé dessus. Ne elle oncques ne peult tant faire avec ses petulantes gesticulations, ne pour luy faire boyre bruvages à ce preparez expressement qu’il se reschauffa, ou commeust, sinon qu’en fin elle le contraignit à cracher et toussir, dont l’haleine sembloit l’exhalation d’ung retraict. Celluy ord vieillart avoit la bouche grande et fenduë presque jusques aux oreilles, les

Tales and Trials of Love 159 an appropriate marriage for her, so as not to lose their daughter to an untimely death. The affair was hastily arranged, and in just a few days, the young lady was betrothed and married off to a rich, well-born (albeit old and already deaf), citizen. He had reached an advanced age, and his cheeks sagged slightly; his eyes were irritated and bloodshot; his hands trembled; his foul breath stank; his head hung toward the ground so that his spine curved like that of a mangy dog, and the front of his coat hung sloppily. In sum, his greatest virtue was in the thought he gave to Avarice, for he was supremely attentive to his insatiable appetite for possessions.7 How the Young Lady Was Married to an Old Man and, Believing That This Was Punishment for Her Ingratitude, Mauled Herself with a Knife. [44r] Now when the sad day of the marriage ceremony had arrived, and Hymenaeus, god of weddings, had joined the guests despite his disapproval of the event, the solemn vows of marriage were celebrated with great pomp and circumstance.8 The night that the lady had so desired and longed for also finally arrived. She firmly believed that the time had come to assuage her fierce appetite and had not even contemplated with whom she would soon accomplish the deed. Until this time, she had vainly worked herself into a frenzy, and her desire had been boundless. She longed for nothing more than to experience the delicious fruits of marriage and, beside herself with ravenous longing, she climbed into bed alongside the cold and impotent old man who was her husband. Embraced in his arms, more aroused than was seemly for a young lady and full of an immediate and nagging yearning, she tried to make love to him in a thousand different ways because Cupid (whom she had offended), fanned the flame of desire more effectively than a pair of bellows applied to a blacksmith’s forge. But despite her efforts, she received no satisfaction other than having her phlegmatic husband dribble on her charming cheeks and red lips so that one might have thought that a slug had crawled across her face. She could accomplish nothing, neither with her vigorous movements nor even by making him drink potions prepared expressly to arouse him. She succeeded only in provoking him to spit and cough, causing him to exhale a breath so putrid that it smelled like the fumes from a privy. This filthy, old man had a large mouth that stretched

160 Comptes amoureux lefvres pasles, la voix grosse, indistincte: et à peine luy estoient [44v] restées en la gueule quatre dens pourries et caverneuses, comme pierre de ponce: troys dessus, et une dessoubz. Il avoit la barbe dure, comme le poil d’ung vieulx asne, et poignante comme si ce fussent chardons, longue, mal peignée, et blanchissante. Ses yeulx rouges estoyent larmoyans, et moillés, son né estoit camu, gros, et hiulque, plein de long poil, morveux, rendant quand il parloit tousjours ung son enroué: si qu’il sembla toute nuict à l’infelice mariée qu’il feit sonner une vessie pleine de vent, et poys, son visage estoit ord et salle, la teste chaulve, les joues plattes et pleines de taches, et verrues: et sur les yeulx estoient posez les sourcilz gros et enfléz, il eust la gorge hispide et regrillée comme celle d’une tortuë pallustre: Et ses trementes mains estoyent sans vigueur aulcune, le reste du corps pourry, maladif, et sans vertu: et en son marcher il estoit si caducque, qu’a chascun pas chopper luy convenoit. Et quand il rehaulsoit ses vestemens, de là exhaloit une pueur d’urine abhominable. Par laquelle cause, cheres compaignes, povez considerer en quelle melancolie estoit la dolente espousée: laquelle estant totallement frustrée de son intention, ne luy peult oncques, tant sceut elle bien user des actes, que font les amoureuses couchées avec leurs jeunes amys, exciter les membres prosternéz et endormis de sa vieillesse enorme et sans vigueur. Dont advint apres que par long temps ne povant aultre fruict recepvoir de ce mary, maulvais, facheux, vieillard, ocieux, inutil, sans force, plus ja-[45r]loux que le boiteux Vulcan, sinon bastures, debatz, injures: et recogneust qu’elle estoit deceuë de son effrené desir: et qu’elle recepvoit par ce moyen le merite de ses obstinez reffuz. Puis durement se guementoit non tant de son facheux et abhominable vieillart, et de l’infructueux mariage, mais du temps qu’elle avoit dés son enfance jusques à l’heure presente imprudemment perdu par perte dommageable. Et par ce qu’elle scavoit qu’il ne se pourroit recommencer par aulcun moyen que ce fut, avec tresgrande douleur s’en contristoit. Et que plus fort la tormentoit, c’est qu’elle veoit les aultres ses voysines estre heueusement mariées, et les plusieurs d’elle vivre contentes avec leurs jeunes et vigoreux amys en joye et soulas: satisfaictes amplement en leurs delicieux appetiz. Et à cela penser chascun moment du jour la stimuloit sa chaleureuse nature pressée par l’offencée puissance. Finablement la malheureuse reallumée, et se rompant

Tales and Trials of Love 161 almost from ear to ear, with pale lips, a booming, indistinct voice, and he barely had any [44v] teeth remaining in his mouth, apart from four rotten ones—three on top and one in the bottom—that were as full of holes as a piece of volcanic rock. His beard was as rough as the hair of an old ass: as bristly as thistles, long, poorly groomed and turning white. His bloodshot eyes were teary and moist; his nose was short, squished, fat, oily, had long, protruding hairs, was snotty, and produced such a loud, whistling noise when he spoke that the unhappy bride felt all night long as if he were making sounds with a pig’s bladder full of air and peas. His face was grimy and dirty, his head bald, his cheeks hollow and riddled with imperfections and warts, and above his eyes were perched thick, swollen eyebrows. His neck was as hairy and wrinkled as a tortoise that one might find in the marsh, and his trembling hands were completely lifeless. The rest of his body was rotting, morbid and without a single redeeming quality, and his gait was so uncertain that he stumbled with every step. And when he removed his clothing, the stink of urine was repulsive. You can see why, my dear friends, this sad, young bride felt so miserable. Her efforts resulted in complete frustration. Although she knew all about the acts that women-in-love carry out in bed with their lovers, she could do nothing to arouse those flaccid, dormant members of his enormous, lifeless, old body. After a long time, she realized that her efforts led to nothing more than beatings, arguments, and insults from her mean, loathsome, old, idle, useless, weak husband, who was more jealous [45r] than the crippled god Vulcan.9 She began to realize that she was annoyed by the desire that had worked her into such a state and that this was the price that she had to pay for her prior, obstinate refusal of her suitors. She then began fiercely lamenting not her loathsome and repulsive old husband nor her sterile marriage, but rather the time that she imprudently and irretrievably had lost from her childhood until the present day. And since she knew that there was no possible way to start her life anew, she grew sad and suffered greatly. And she grew all the more tormented when she saw her neighbors who were happily married and many others who shared their lives contentedly, joyfully, and merrily with their young, dynamic lovers. Their appetites for sensuality were amply satisfied. Every moment of every day, the weight of this thought further provoked her burning desire, another way in which Cupid, whose supremacy she had offended, could cause her injury.

162 Comptes amoureux en ardente envye, et de plus fort en soy repetant l’intolerable et tedieuse vie de son hay vieillard, et desesperée de mieulx jamais avoir, se fascha en telle facon, qu’elle commenca cruellement à s’esgrastiner le visaige, et à batre son estomach criant et urlant hydeusement. Elle eust ses yeux baignez en larmes plus ameres que n’eust jamais Egeria. Elle ne prenoit rien à gré, elle ne desiroit chose qui fut: tout luy estoit de maulvaise saveur, sinon l’improbe mort, et desiroit aussi cruelle fin que feit en soy le desolé Yphis. Dont luy survint de là une furieuse [45v] fureur: et desplaisante à soymesme à riens plus ne tachoit, que d’estre le bourreau de sa vie. Ce qu’elle en peu de jours meist à execution. Car sans le sceu de son mary, cacha en son lict ung tranchant cousteau, duquel comme coulpable malefique, rompuë et ostée toute esperance, faicte de soy mortelle ennemye (ò cas enorme et jamais non ouy!) en la nuict se deffit en appellant à son trespas les luctueuses Furies d’enfer. Las moy cheres amyes miserable et afflicte si de mon temps tel malheureux et execrable inconvenient survenoit à aulcune de vous que j’ayme si cherement: Certes plus grande defortune ne me pourroit pas advenir. Et bien pourrois je à bon droict dire, que le comble de malheur me seroit survenu. Mais quelle occursation despritz nocturne, de luithons, de sorciers, de larves plus formidable, plus invisible et horrible à mes yeulx se pourroit presenter, si tel sinistre dommage à vostre cause vous advenoit? Scaches cheres et amoureuses dames, quel ire et courroux inevitable d’amour ou tost, ou tard a de coustume faire telles punitions: telles que souffit par son peché la nymphe Castalia du Dieu Apollo. Et par celle mesme offense, la belle fille de Phorcus, laquelle de tout son povoir aspre et incivile envers ceulx qui la vouloient aymer, luy furent par sa ferme rigueur des celestes Dieux ses cheveux blondz et dorez muez en horribles et tortues serpens dont elle apres desirant en l’amoureuse et contemnée compaignie se retrouver, eulx espoventez du chef [46r] serpentin s’en fuyoient, et elle autant embrasée de desirs libidineux que le mont de Vesuvio, de ses flammes sulphurines de plus fort les desiroit et poursuyvoit. Gardez vous donc soigneusement cheres dames, d’offenser le vray Amour, ne desprisez les celestes dispositions, et causes ordonnées, lesquelles font en temps opportun, et deu eschauffer les jeunes creatures en amours. Car il appartient seul aux folles garces de faires à ces venerables misteres rigoureuse

Tales and Trials of Love 163 Finally, the wretched woman regained her strength; her burning desire got the better of her, and she began to curse all the more vehemently the intolerable, tedious life that she lived with her old husband. Saddened that she would never have anyone better, she grew so angry that she began to scratch her own face brutally and beat upon her chest, all the while crying and wailing hideously. Her eyes were bathed in tears bitterer than any that the nymph Egeria had ever cried.10 She found pleasure in nothing; she wanted nothing; nothing appealed to her except an untimely death, and she hoped for an end as cruel as the one that was afflicted on Iphis.11 From this state, she progressed into an enraged [45v] madness and, disgusted with herself, she strove for nothing more in life than to be her own executioner. And she accomplished this several days later. Without her husband’s knowledge, she hid a sharp knife in the bed, which she used to hold herself accountable for her wrongdoing. Having given up and lost all hope, she made a mortal enemy of herself (oh, what a terrible, unheard-of thing!). During the night, she took her own life while calling out for the ominous presence of Hell’s fury to attend her deathbed. “Oh, my dear friends, how miserable and afflicted I would feel if in my lifetime such a sad and appalling event were to befall any one of you, whom I love so dearly. Certainly, a greater misfortune could not possibly happen to me. And I can confidently say that this would be the saddest event imaginable. But if such an appalling incident were to happen to you, just what sort of formidable, quasi-invisible, horrible nocturnal spirits, goblins, sorcerers, or hags might appear before my eyes? “You must be aware, my dear ladies-in-love, of the inevitable ire and indignation that sooner or later tends to influence Cupid’s punishments. And by this, I am referring to the type of punishment that the nymph Castalia suffered for her sin against the god Apollo.12 And for this same offense, the heavenly gods turned the golden blonde hair of Phorcys’s beautiful daughter into horrible, twisted snakes because she had done her utmost to be uncivil toward those who proclaimed their love for her. After her transformation, she wished nothing more than to be in the loving company of those whom she had turned away, but they were disgusted by her serpentine visage [46r] and fled from her, and she, as burning with libidinous desire as Mount Vesuvius, felt those sulfuric flames further provoke her longing and futile pursuit.13

164 Comptes amoureux resistence: et si ne considerent (ò chose nefaste!) qu’elles injurient le Ciel, et trop offensent la benigne nature. Fin du troysiesme Compte Amoureux.

Tales and Trials of Love 165 “Take good care, my dear ladies, not to offend Cupid, nor to scorn the heavenly powers and their laws, for they will in due time provoke the flame of desire within all of their subjects, and in the prime of their life. Only foolish young women will dare ruthlessly to resist these venerable mysteries, and in so doing they forget (oh, what a destructive thing to do!) that to offend the benevolent nature of the heavens is not only unwarranted, but also quite an insult.” Here ends the third Tale of Love.

166 Comptes amoureux COMPTE QUATRIESME par Madame Egine Minerve.

La se teust la gentille et amoureuse Meduse, et en son lieu se tint paisible ayant la face ver-[46v]meille comme sang du desdaing qu’elle avoit prins d’une telle grande offense. Dont madame Minerve femme pour vraye tresbelle, jeune, gaye et eloquente en son parler, va dire: Ce n’est pas, comme il est aisé à veoir mes Dames, de maintenant qu’on veoit en cest endroict d’amours plusieurs grosses et irreparables faultes, plusieurs gros et enormes crimes estre perpetrez, et plusieurs pauvres malheureuses et imprudentes en rapporter la peine de celles leurs damnables erreurs. Par ce il me souvient affin de ne tumber en la calamité convenu, avoir naguieres dict en une bonne compaignie à voix haulte et hardie: Que telles longues dilations en la reception des faictz d’amours pleusrent oncques: et reprinse d’aulcuns peu scavans, que je ne die froidz jaloux, par vives et apparentes raisons fortifiay mon dire, de facon que je fus estimée apres soustenir non seulement chose raisonnable et bonne mais tresnecessaire et tresutile aux Dames. Le plus souvent nous summes par le vouloir et choix de noz parens joictes par l’adamantin lien de mariage à vieillars chanuz qui ont ja ung pied en la fosse: et avec ces corps de glace nous sommes contrainctes user nos malheureux ans, en quelle peine dieu le scait. Dont n’est de merveille si noz beaultez deschéent plustost que ne faict la tendre rosée de may: et si au matin nous levant d’empres ces beaulx et elegans maris c’est ascavoir, nous faict on si maulvais veoir. Combien que encores la chose seroit tollerable s’ilz avoient tant [47r] soit peu de vigueur en leurs debiles corps, pour satisfaire sinon en tout, aumoins en partie à cela, ou gist tout le bien de ceste mienne passante jeunesse. Et non sans cause s’en complainct une noble, excellente et jeune Dame en ceste sorte:

Tales and Trials of Love 167 TALE FOUR Told by Madame Egine Minerve.

At that point dear, love-struck Meduse ended her tale and sat there calmly, her face flush [46v] from the disgust that she felt at having suffered such a great offense.1 And then Madame Minerve, truly a very lovely, young, cheerful, and eloquent woman, said: “It is clear to all of us here, my dear friends, that we have not witnessed many gross and irreparable errors committed around here, for this place is dedicated to love. Neither are many great and enormous crimes committed, nor do many poor, unfortunate and imprudent women deserve punishment for incorrigible mistakes. All of this talk reminds me that I once spoke before a rather large gathering of people, in a raised and courageous voice, of how to avoid falling victim to such a fate.2 I said: ‘May you never hesitate to welcome love with open arms!’ “A few uncouth men (and by that, I refer to those cold, jealous types) rebuked me for having said this. I then illustrated my argument with vivid and plausible examples to such an extent that I earned the esteem of those listening for supporting not only a good and reasonable action, but also something very necessary and useful for women. Most often we are, by the will and choice of our parents, joined in the binding tie of marriage to decrepit, old men who already have one foot in the grave. And with these glacial bodies we are obliged to endure our miserable lives, a painful existence that only God can understand. For this reason, it is hardly shocking that our beauty fades more quickly than that of the tender rose of May, if in the morning we are waking up next to these handsome and elegant husbands (or should I say so-difficult-to-endure husbands). “Nonetheless, the situation would be tolerable if they only had [47r] just enough vigor in their frail bodies to satisfy us (if not completely then at least partially), wherein lays the prize of our passing youth. It is thus not without cause that a noble, refined, young lady might complain in this fashion:

168 Comptes amoureux En languissant, et en griefve tristesse Vit mon las cueur jadis plein de liesse, Puis que l’on m’a donné mary vieillart. Helas pourquoy? Riens ne scait du vieil art Qu’apprent Venus l’amoureuse Déesse. Par ung desir de monstrer ma prouesse Souvent l’assaux: mais il demande ou est ce? Ou dort peult estre, et mon cueur veille à part, En languissant. Puis quand je veulx luy joueur de finesse Honte me dict, Cesse ma fille, cesse: Garde t’en bien: à honneur prens esgard. Lors je respons: Honte, allez à l’escart: Je ne veulx pas perdre ainsi ma jeunesse, En languissant.

Tales and Trials of Love 169 In languishment, weary, in sad dismay, Endures my heart—so joyful yesterday: Given an aged husband for my own, Alas! To him that ancient art’s unknown Which loving Venus taught us to obey. Frequently, desiring to display My skills, I lunge at him. ‘What’s this?!’ he’ll say. Or when he sleeps, my heart must watch alone— In languishment. I long to please him then, my guiles betray; But Shame cries: ‘Stop, my dear one, stop! Oh, pray— Guard your honor!’ Then, in an angry tone, I say: ‘Shame, go away, at once,’ and groan. I do not wish to waste my youth this way— In languishment.”3

170 Comptes amoureux [47v] Madame Minerve admonestant les dames qui sont aymées de reaymer leurs Amants, faict son Compte de la mort de Narcissus, et transmutation de Echo. [woodcut] Veu ce nous n’avons doncques tort amoureuses compaignes si pour mitiguer noz martyres venons à choisir qui puisse supplier aux faultes que font noz maris impotens, lesquelz possible, quoy qu’ilz meslent le ciel et la terre ensemble quand ilz nous surpreignent en noz larcins amoureux, sont bien joyeulx de trouver œuvre faicte. Les dames ne se peurent tenir adonc de rire on oyant ainsi parler madame Minerve: Puis le ris cessé, ainsi ma dame Egine Minerve derechef print la parolle. Trop deplorable fut l’yssuë, et torment de celle pauvre mal advisée, et dont il me Prendroit grande pitié, amoureuses compaignes, si je ne venois [48r] à considerer: Que pource, oultre qu’elle avoit merité pis, Amour lors voulut en elle monstrer exemple de l’hault povoir de sa justice. Au vouloir et obeissance duquel je me submets du tout sans que jamais je me desparte de son bon service. Telle est ma ferme deliberation, et propos: Que je soubstiendray à l’encontre de tous sa dignité et noblesse, son regne eternel et celeste. Et bien avez en mon visage naguieres peu facilement discerner, combien est grand le zelle que je luy porte, quand du desdaing que j’ay prins en oyant les visibles blasphemes de madame Cebille, toute la couleur de mon visage s’en est fuyée, et suis demeurée toute exangue. Dont icy fault briefvement que je retonde ses faulses opinions et sentences, quand d’ung maling vouloir est ainsi venuë à blasmer celluy qui tout peult, au sein dis je, duquel devotement les Dames, qui sont de bons et saiges advis, sacrifient leurs secretez pensemens, et leurs ames propres. Son non est Amour, père regnant en ses puissances fortes au ciel. Iceluy s’esloigne tousjours des superbes cœurs et vuides de doulce et louable pitié telz que j’appercois veritablement le vostre consister, Dame Cebille, quand en l’oyant nommer, il vous prent envye de vomir, et vous en resentez du tout estre debilitée. Mais icy je doubte fort que apres longs tormens et cruciantes peines, qu’il vous infligera, il ne vienne tout oultre à descouvrir ses justes desdaings, et qu’il ne face

Tales and Trials of Love 171 [47v] Madame Minerve, Admonishing Ladies Who Are Loved to Return the Love of Their Suitors, Tells the Tale of Narcissus’s Death and Echo’s Transformation.

“In light of this, we therefore are not in the wrong if, in order to mitigate our torment, we choose someone who might fill the void left by our impotent husbands, who, although they may curse both the heavens and the earth on surprising us in the midst of an amorous escapade, are quite happy to find the job done.” On hearing what Madame Minerve had said, the ladies could not prevent themselves from laughing. Then, once the chuckling had ceased, Madame Egine Minerve again took the floor: “All too appalling was the fate and torment of this poor, ill-advised woman. Therefore, it would pain me greatly, my dear friends, if I were not [48r] to consider the fact that because of this (regardless of whether she may have deserved worse) Cupid wanted to make an example of her to demonstrate his great power to render justice. I completely surrender myself to his will and obedience, so that I might never be deprived of his gracious service. This is my firm decision and declaration of faith: I will uphold his complete sanctity and nobility and his eternal and celestial reign above all else. “I suspect that my facial expressions revealed quite clearly the extent of my devotion to him, for when I heard Madame Cebille’s obvious blasphemy (which brought on such feelings of disdain), all the color left my face, and I grew quite pale. Since her cursing of he-who-can-do-all arises from such ill will, I therefore must briefly refute her false opinions and statements. I assure you that devoted ladies (by this, I refer to those of good and wise opinion) sacrifice their hearts, minds, and very souls to this same god. “His name is Cupid, and this most heavenly father reigns supreme. He distances himself from the proud of heart and from those devoid of the commendable quality of kindhearted compassion. I truly feel that you are guilty of these faults, Madame Cebille, for when hearing his name pronounced, you are overcome by a strong urge to regurgitate, and you feel

172 Comptes amoureux pareillement en vous ung exemple publicque. Il n’est cer-[48v]tes faict de bon sens d’ainsi despriser et se mocquer des vertus celestes: et moins de celle du vray Amour. Car quantes, je vous prye en a on veu se repentir amerement d’avoir honnoré à tard la vertueuse flesche? Les flammes amoureuses sont tousjours prestes en sa main dextre, ou arriver ne peult la veuë des mortelz, tellement que celluy qui les pense plus eslongnée, en ung seul petit moment les veoit par tout espanchées en son debile cœur. Ne chose est plus cruelle de la vindicte que prent Amour offencé. Ne seulement vient il embrasser les cœurs à les lyer, ou à poindre de poignantes sagettes, et contre telz si aspres et penetrans corps ne valent armes, ou quelque defense que se soit, mais aussi souvent faict que son ennemy qui brusloit auparavant en ses ardeurs amoureuses, devient plus refroidy que nul glacon, en le vulnerant d’ung vireton rebouché de poincte et ferré de plomb: En voulez vous plusieurs exemples? Quants en y a il doloreux advenuz et loing et pres? Quantes dolentes compaignes en cestuy nostre temps ont desja Dido, Philis, Oenone, Phedra, Adrianne, et Medée? Et chascune de cestes cy (s’il est vray ce que les escripvains en dient) au premier eurent Amour et ses flambeaux à despris, jusques à ce que le printemps de leur aage se veit estre converty en pluyes ameres, et en esté tempestueux. Phœbus, dont vivent le ciel, la terre et la mer, Phœbus, dis je, le recteur du divin œil eterne par preuve scait quel dommage recoit celuy, qui contre l’amour se veult re-[49r]beller. Mais qui ne pourroit à la verité faire plus de foy que le beau filz de Cephisus? Lequel de tant qu’il fut envers aultruy desdaigneux et dur, d’autant apres à luy mesmes vint trop à se plaire et contenter. La cause, c’est pource que Amour, soubz l’empire duquel tousjours a despleu la cruaulté et orgueil, de tant qu’il cognoist grand le peché de celuy qui l’offense, d’autant use il contre luy d’une plus aspre et dolente punition. Il n’est mémoire que l’alme Nature jamais ait formé creature de beaulté si excellente, comme estoit d’elle procrée Narcissus. Et les troys Graces meirent toute leur solicitude à le faire sortir au monde de forme lumineuse et celeste. Ne la Dame, laquelle attrempe et meust le tier ciel, ne se monstra chiche de ses vertuz pour le rendre tel au monde qu’il n’eust son pareil. Desja l’enfant dont je vous parle, amoureuses compaignes, croissoit, publicque peste de tant qu’il y avoit là de Dames et damoiselles. Et les pudiques matrones, qui auparavant n’avoient tenu comptes d’amour,

Tales and Trials of Love 173 completely incapacitated. But then I hardly doubt that he will inflict great torment and excruciating pain on you, thereby revealing his justifiable disdain and making an example of you, too. “It is certainly [48v] ill advised to deride and mock the heavenly powers, especially Cupid’s powers. For how many women, I ask you, have we seen bitterly repent for having too late honored his virtuous arrows? He stands ready, bearing the flames of love in his right hand, undetectable to mere mortals so that anyone who thinks himself impervious to Cupid’s arrows might in an instant find them piercing his fragile heart. There is nothing crueler than Cupid’s vengeance. At times, Cupid makes an appearance in order to take solitary hearts into his care and bind them with another. At other times, he strikes them with arrows. There is no use to bear arms or any sort of defense, since for him even the vilest heart is penetrable. At times he may arrange for his enemy—though he might once have burned with ardent love—to become colder than ice, simply by piercing him with the blunt head of an iron arrow. “Do you care to hear more examples? Can you imagine how much pain he has caused both far and near? How many miserable women of our time may share the plight of Dido, Phyllis, Oenone, Phaedre, Ariadne, and Medea?4 And each one of the latter (if what the writers say is true) at first held Cupid and his arrows in disdain, until, in the prime of life, he replaced their youth and vitality with showers of bitter tears and storms of emotions. Phoebus, whereby live the heavens, the earth and the sea, Phoebus, I tell you, the omnipotent ruler of all that is holy and eternal, knows that those who refuse love are damned.”5 [49r]6 And who could truly attest to this fact more than the handsome son of Cephisus, who, while he may have been disdainful and harsh toward others, was overcome by self-obsession and self-love.7 The reason for this is because Cupid, who reigned supreme, despised Narcissus’s cruelty and pride. And the greater the sin, the more bitter and painful the punishment. Never in her history had gracious Mother Nature formed a creature of such excellent beauty as she had in Narcissus. And the three Graces put extreme care into making his birth a luminous and heavenly event. Madame Venus, who governs and stirs the heavens, was hardly stingy in bestowing him with virtue, so that he might enter into the world without equal. Now this child of whom I speak grew up quickly, my dear ladies, and became a public menace to any and all women—both young and old.

174 Comptes amoureux ains tousjours desprisé ses sacrifices, en contemplant la beaulté de Narcissus, se resentoient en celuy aspect durement s’eschauffer. Brief les undes des courans fleuves, et les estoilles mesmes se sentoient ardoir petit à petit jusques à ce qu’elles estoient toutes plongées en la flamme amoureuse. Mais Narcissus enfant cruel et superbe pour sa grande et excessive beaulté ne tenoit compte des pauvres poursuyvantes. Ne le Torrent ne desvalle si impetueusement des haultes montaignes, comme celuy cruel esche[49v]voit l’amour des nobles femmes amoureuses. Lesquelles sans cesse en ce poinct disoient pleines de larmes. Ah despiteux et cruel!Guespe au longs jours d’esté embrasée? Las pourquoy n’est en nous aultant de beaulté que tu en as? Ou bien dedans ce tien cœur de fer, qui ne sont cestes nos peines et desirs enflambez? Ah quantes piteuses voix? Quantz souspirs, quantes larmes en vain les afflictes damoiselles respandirent? Ores elles blasmoient la fortune, ores leurs aspres desirs, par desrompuz rochers et saulvaiges forestz errantes. Puis accusoient le jour, lequel se trouvoit vaincu par deux si beaulx yeulx, aussi le ciel damnoient elles d’avoir caiché soubz si belle fleur et rose ung ver tant cruel et venimeux. Ah amour paresseux, disoient elles, ou est maintenant ton arc juste vindicateur des offenses d’aultruy? Comment souffres tu dedans ton sainct parc que le chasseur inique s’en voise ainsi chargé de si excellentes proyes? et que luy, ravies les despouilles des simples damoiselles non assez bien advisées et saiges, marche en orgueil et triumphe? Sera il à jamais ainsi liberé despriseur des amoureux assaulx? O sainct amour si oncques tu fuz esmeu par prieres justes et honnestes, trebuche ton ire sur le commun ennemy des Dames. Quelles prieres ont esté par le passé qui ayent touché le tien desdaing, si cestes cy ne l’esmeuvent? Comme luy par la vertu de ses beaulx yeulx a envoyé ung millier de tes flammes dedans les cœurs fœminins, nous te prions, Amour, que aumoins tu faces que par les mesmes yeulx se [50r] decoipve en celle sa beaulté: et que la deception qu’il a mise en aultruy, derive en fin en luy mesme pour cognoistre les passions qu’il nous inflige à tort. Mais celle grande force, dont souvent Juppiter, Appollo, et le belliqueux Mars ont esté vaincuz, qu’est elle devenuë? As-tu ainsi tes justes yeulx vuydez de toute doulce pitié en nous laissant icy sans ayde et secours? Maintenant si nulle commiseration de nous ne t’esmeust par les voix lamentables espandues, aumoins te debvra exciter et commouvoir l’ancien

Tales and Trials of Love 175 And the sight of Narcissus’s beauty awakened in even the most prudent and discreet ladies (those who had never before allowed their hearts to love and had always despised the sacrifices love requires) an unfamiliar and persistent warmth. In short, the rivers flowing their course—and even the stars twinkling in the sky—began little by little to burn with love, until they were completely engulfed in a blazing passion. But Narcissus was a cruel child and so proud of his great and striking beauty that he hardly took notice of his poor followers. No blizzard could overcome the highest mountains as impetuously as this cruel child shunned [49v] the love of these worthy, love-struck ladies. They tearfully and unremittingly cried: “Oh, you spiteful and cruel boy! You are but a wasp harassing us in the heat of summer! Alas, why are we not as beautiful as you? Why is it that our pain and passion have no influence on your heart of stone? Oh how numerous are our disgraceful cries!” The mournful cries, wistful sighs, and useless tears of those poor, young ladies could be heard far and wide. They wandered aimlessly across jagged crags and through untamed woods, all the while cursing their misfortune and their caustic desires. Then they cursed the day when they were overcome by those two beautiful eyes, and they damned the heavens for having hidden such cruelty beneath such a pleasing façade, just as a worm damages a lovely flower or a sharp thorn renders painful the rose. “Oh, Cupid, why are you so negligent?” they asked. “Where is your righteous bow now that we require its service for our vindication? How can you lie idle in your holy hunting ground now that the malicious hunter has filled it with such excellent prey? And Narcissus, after having pillaged and ravished these poor, simple, misguided women (they knew not what they were doing), parades triumphant and prideful! Will he always remain so: free to scorn love’s assaults? Oh, holy Cupid, if only these just and honest prayers would move you to invoke your ire upon this enemy, for all women view him as such. What sorts of requests have swayed you in the past, what sorts of actions have provoked your disdain, if these of which we speak fail to move you? Narcissus—by virtue of his beautiful eyes—has invaded our hearts, as if pierced by thousands of your flaming arrows. We pray that you, Cupid, at least react in kind. Make it so that those very eyes [50r] beguile him with his own beauty and that he may feel for himself the bewilderment that he provoked in others. Do this so that he may understand the obsession that he wrongly inflicted on

176 Comptes amoureux honneur de ton hault regne. Si le jouvenceau superbe s’en va desprisant sans aultre peine le feu amoureu, qui ne desprisera desormais ta majesté contemnée hardiment et sans craincte? Les traictz qui en la terre et au ciel ont delivrez si durs assaulx, descheantz petit à petit de leur premier honneur, ò sainct Amour, te monstreront de brief quelles vergoigne et honte celluy attend qui ne daigne faire vengeance des siens propos oultragez. Ainsi se guementoient par montz et vaulx les pauvres miserables, et jectoient leurs plainctes et querelles aux ventz sourds, et en l’air, et convertiz leurs yeulx en larmoiantes fontaines, dont elle baignoient leurs joues flestries et sans couleur, comme les herbes et fleurs de la gelée nocturne, se mettoient à chercher celuy, qui seul estoit l’occasion de leur dueil. D’elles en y eust plus d’une qui estoit fort desirante de le retrouver, en fin lasse et foible en devenoit: et l’ame d’elle de loing enflambée, apres estant prochaine de l’amy long temps quys, une extreme craincte pres-[50v]soit. En celle grande multitude de damoiselles aymantes le beau Narcissus, se retrouva aussi plus d’une, à qui le desespoir mesme donnoit espoir de luy parler piteusement. Dont apres avec une hardiesse intemperée couroit à la mort, seule fin de tous les travaulx humains: «Las,» disoient elles, «quelle faulte peult le jeune amy commettre, si nous deffaillons à nous mesmes? si ne nous scavons prochasser le bien desiré? Paradventure qu’il ne s’est apperceu de nos desirs, et est ignorant des douleurs receués pour son amour: et neantmoins paresseuses nous plaignons, et descouvrons nos ennuiz aux regions, aux montaignes et valées, et aux ventz qui n’ont point d’oreilles: et les taisons en silence vers qui nous pourroit soulaiger et donner proffitable secours.» Ainsi parlant les afflictées aymantes et dolousant trespiteusement, suiyvoient les pas de l’amant fugitif, pensant de se retrouver devant luy avec prieres pitoiables, et persuasions artificielles, repetoient à part elles, en quelle sorte, luy descouvroient leurs doulces, et ardentes amours. «Je diray,» pensoit une, «cecy au premier poinct: puis cella viendra plus que à propos pour response à ses reffuz si on vient jusques à là.» Or en faisant ces belles deliberations de bien haranguer, conseil solide deffailloit en leurs ames: et variablement celà et celà plaist et desplaist: Si que pervenues en la presence du jeune filz plus beau vrayement que pitoyable, les esperances, les desdaings, et prieres en ung moment mettoient en oubly. Seulement disoit chascune à [51r]

Tales and Trials of Love 177 us. What indeed has become of your force, for it once was so great as to conquer Jupiter, Apollo, and even the war-mongering Mars?8 Have you abandoned all sense of mercy since you leave us here without any hope of salvation? If our woeful cries do not move you to feel compassion for us, they must at least invoke and call upon the honorable tradition of your holy reign. If this young boy is allowed to spread his scorn for love without repercussion, who is to say that others will not boldly and fearlessly condemn your majesty? Your arrows, which have deterred many fierce attacks on earth and in the heavens, are gradually losing their former prestige. Oh, holy Cupid, we will soon show you the shame and disgrace that awaits those who do not deign to avenge themselves against slander.” And thus, from the highest mountains and lowest valleys those poor, miserable women moaned and made known their complaints and grievances to the winds and to the heavens, which failed to listen. Their tears became weeping fountains, whose waters they used to refresh their withered, pallid cheeks, just as the night’s frost cools the grass and flowers with its touch. And they began to search for the one who was the cause of their grief. More than one of the women finally grew weary and weak, and her heart was so overly enflamed from hoping to find him that once she came near her long-sought beloved, an extreme fear overcame [50v] her. And among the multitude of women in love with the handsome Narcissus, there also was more than one whose despair became the very source of her determination to speak to him brazenly, and after that encounter she drove herself to her death (the only end to one’s work here on earth) with an untempered fierceness. “Alas,” they said, “what crime could this young boy possibly commit against us when it is actually our own shortcomings that harm us? He has not happened to notice our feelings, and he is ignorant of the pains that our love for him has caused us because we do not know how to pursue him properly. But nonetheless, we continue to complain pointlessly and to make our grief known to all the mountains, the valleys, the winds, and all the world (none of which can hear us), and we say nothing to the only one who has the ability to soothe and succor us.” After saying this, the miserable women followed the path of the renegade beloved, all the while grieving and as love-struck as ever, thinking that their heart-wrenching prayers and cunning nature would lead them to him so that they could reveal their sweet, yet fervent love. “I will divulge my love to him first,” thought one of the women, “then

178 Comptes amoureux voix basse et foible: «Hé Amour qui peulx tout, pourquoy n’esguillonnes et eschaulfes tu ce cœur endurcy, aussi fort comme tu fais le mien? Et pour quoy, lasse que je suis, aumoins ne resent il partie de mes langueurs? Et si cela tu ne veulx faire, Amour, pourquoy ne prestes tu juste hardiesse à ma langue pour dire ses conceptions, desquelles il vienne à prendre quelque pitié en son despiteux cœur? Sont pour ce naiz ses honnestes et relucens yeulx seulement pour estre ca bas mort et douleur de tant qu’il y a de Nymphes et nobles damoiselles s’esmerveillantes et bruslantes, en son amour?» Ainsi cheres Dames, ce que à aultruy les Nymphes affligées vouloient descouvrir, à elles mesmes n’osoient à peine descouvrir. Et telle se sentoit estre pleine de glacons, qui estoit de vehemente ardeur et hardiesse toute au paravant remplye. Une aultre ne scait que paslir à tous propos: et l’aultre que proroger le desir, qui l’oppresse: l’aultre, las, ne scait sinon demeurer muette sans parler en attente que aultruy luy preste la hardiesse de s’avancer. Mais trop et vrayement attent celuy qui ayme, et attent de recepvoir ayde et secours d’aultruy à qui il ne touche. Toutes ces faultes que commettoient les Nymphes poursuyvantes ne congnoissent elles: et sans cesse et pitié les enflamboit de plus fort le cruel Narcissus entre aultres qui suyvoient celle leur malle adventure, fut Echo la plus noble et gentille de toutes. Et ne fut qu’elle estoit ung temps privée de sa doulce loquence, possible fut pervenuë à la joyssance de [51v] ses amoureux desirs. Mais telle fut sa malle destinée, telle son estoille maligne: quand le don abundant que jadis luy avoit imparty Nature, lire et courroux d’aultruy injuste et desraisonnable luy changea et desroba par ce moyen que je vous diray. [woodcut] Ung jour la sœur et espouse du grand père du ciel la saincte Juno devenuë adonc jalouse de son mary plus qu’elle n’avoit jamais esté (et bien lors en avoit elle l’occasion) le cherchant en je ne scais quelle vallée obscure, rencontra en son chemin la Nymphe Echo, qui luy demande ou elle va, et d’où elle vient en l’abbusant longuement là de parolles et fables jusques à ce que Juppiter se fut diverty du lieu ou il prenoit ses esbatz amoureux, et qu’il eust caché celle qui le tenoit en joye. Mais Juno assez plus saige, et ayant esté plusieurs foys en

Tales and Trials of Love 179 I will come up with a more appropriate counter to his refusal, if it comes to that.” Although they were quite determined to plead their case, they were lacking in resolve and wavering between which plan to follow so that when they found themselves in the presence of the young man in question (who possessed more beauty than compassion), their hopes, disdain, and prayers were forgotten in an instant. Each one was only able to utter [51r] in a hushed, feeble voice, “Oh, almighty Cupid, why do you not arouse and enflame his callous heart as you did mine? And why, as pitiful as I am, does he not notice my sorrow in the slightest? And if you do not wish to make him feel this way Cupid, why do you not just give me the words to express my feelings, words that will inspire pity in his spiteful heart? Were his virtuous, gleaming eyes created only to cause the death of nymphs and other honorable ladies in this world who marvel at his sight and burn for his love?” And this, dear ladies, is what the afflicted nymphs wished to reveal to others, but could scarcely reveal to themselves. One woman felt as cold as ice, although she had earlier felt flush from that fiery passion that burned unrelentingly within her. Another could do nothing more than grow pale at every word she heard; yet another could do nothing more than prolong the desire that oppressed her, and alas, still another could not even speak, for she was waiting for someone to instill in her the strength to continue. But all too long wait those who love in vain. And they wait foolishly for salvation from one who has none to give. The nymphs continued their pursuit, unaware of their numerous missteps, and meanwhile, Narcissus furthered their suffering, unyielding in his merciless cruelty. Among those who were observing this misadventure was Echo, the most noble and gracious of all.9 And she had only just lost her sweet voice when the fulfillment of [51v] her heart’s desire became a possibility. But such was her sad destiny: her star began to lose its brilliance when the special gift that Mother Nature had given her was transformed, snatched from her indignantly and vengefully. I am about to tell you just how this unjust and irrational act occurred. One day, Saint Juno (the sister and wife of the great father of the heavens) grew more jealous of her husband than she ever had been (and she had had plenty of occasions to feel so).10 While looking for him in many strange and obscure places, she came upon the nymph Echo, who

180 Comptes amoureux ceste facon trompée, et deceuë congeust facilement que celle l’abbusoit. Dont proposa sus elle s’en aigrement venger, comme elle feit. «O Nymphe,» dit elle, «affin que le monde n’appreigne à se mocquer des puissances celestes, je yeulx que de toy tu ne puisses jamais [52r] plus parler. Et ce soit la peine deué à tes superflues babilz, dont tant de fois tu m’as detenuë et abusée, soit» dit Juno, «ta peine que tu ne puisses sinon replicquer les dernieres parolles d’aultruy.» Ce disant Juno fort courroucée et marrie de ce que son mary estoit ainsi eschappé, s’en alla par ung aultre chemin, et la miserable Echo demeura là pleurant amerement sa desfortune. Plusieurs foys se prosterna aux piedz de l’offensée Déesse ouvrant les lefvres pour cuyder requerir et supplier mercy: et vouloit amplement s’excuser, mais elle proferoit seulement les extremes parolles d’aultruy parlant. Las quelle grande douleur sentit puis que la force luy deffailloit à son long vouloir. Elle se repent trop tard la pauvrete, et entre craincte et vergoigne incessamment en sa face demeure rouge et pasle. Bien luy souvient il avoir aultres foys proudict à ses besoigns, et quelle ne fut jamais lassée de confabuler avec ses compaignes, si ne scait comment se doibve retrouver avec elles sans honte de sa parolle perduë. Doncques esmeust elle ses pas lentz et foibles en fuyant tout homme, cherchant ung lieu solitaire pour demeurer. Et ainsi entre vallées umbrageuses, entre montaignes et rochers elle va consumant petit à petit ses jours, ses membres affligez, et ses espritz lassez recepvroient voluntiers la mort en gré, car elle vit en se taisant, et de seule douleur se repaist ayant envie à quiconques ne fut jamais né. Or advint par malheur que ung jour ceste se complaignoit en une basse valée, ou aupres n’y avoit villai[52v]ge ou maison champestre, qui la peult en ses pleurs empescher, quand elle ouyt de loing le bruyt des chasseurs. Parquoy en repliquant seulement les extremes voix se preparoit à la suyte, mais sur ce point voicy venir le damoiseau superbe: à la premiere veuë duquel Echo devint tant de luy amoureuse, quelle demeura là comme toute esperduë et ravie à peine scachant que luy estoit advenu. Ains doubtoit assavoir si ce qu’elle voioit estoit vray ou mensonge, et si c’estoit là le beau filz de Cephisus. Bien l’avoit elle veu aultre part, mais non jamais si alaisgre et deliberé. Dont commence ses petitz pas à mouvoir commen quasi repentante de ce qu’elle s’en estoit voulu ainsi sans advis despartir. Or Amour qui dans l’estomac d’elle pleuvoit petites flambes du feu amoureux, la mect au

Tales and Trials of Love 181 asked her where she was going and whence she was coming, all the while cursing her wildly and telling all manner of fibs. The commotion aroused Jupiter from his love nest, allowing him to hide the woman who was pleasuring him before Juno found him. But Juno was wise to Echo. She had often been tricked and deceived in this manner, so she easily recognized what was happening. Consequently, she vowed to punish her severely, which she did. “Oh, nymph,” she said, “so that the world may learn not to mock the gods, I wish that you no longer [52r] be able to speak. This is the penalty that you must pay for your frivolous babble, with which you have so often retained me and misled me,” Juno continued. “May you never utter another original thought, but merely repeat the speech of another.” After saying this, Juno (who was quite angry and aggrieved that her husband had been able to escape) went off in another direction, and poor Echo stayed there, bitterly lamenting her misfortune. Several times, she fell prostrate at the feet of the offended goddess, opening her lips in order to request and plead for mercy. She wanted dearly to beg forgiveness, but she only could emit the sounds of whoever had spoken before her. Alas, what great pain she felt since her actions could not reflect her will. The poor wretch repented too late, and her cheeks grew flush and pale at intervals, revealing her inner battle between fear and shame. She had always been able to say whatever she wished and never tired of conversing with her companions, so she hardly knew how she could return to them without feeling the shame of having lost her power to speak. Thus, she began to move slowly and feebly, keeping her distance from others and seeking a remote place to take refuge. And so she spent her days among dark valleys, mountains, and crags. Her tired limbs and weak spirit would gladly have welcomed death, for she lived in silence and found sustenance in nothing but her pain, eager to live any life other than her own. And so it happened one day that she was mourning in the depths of a valley, far away from any village [52v] or remote dwelling that could distract her from her tears, when she heard the sound of hunters in the distance. Then, echoing the last voices she heard, she was getting ready to follow them when the proud, young lad appeared. She fell in love with him at first sight and stood there completely amazed and carried away, hardly aware of what had happened to her. Even so, she wondered whether this vision were real or imaginary, and if the handsome son of Cephisus were actually present before her. She had seen him before elsewhere,

182 Comptes amoureux roolle des siens, et dés incontinent luy enlace les pieds, et la detient quelle ne s’en puisse esloigner de là. O dolente Echo, combien te fut de besoign maintenant ravoir ta parolle perdué? Seulement tu reste pensible et taisible suyvant les traces de Narcissus ton nouveau amy. Las, ò Dames amoureuses, quantes fois Echo envieuse de parler à son amy, requeroit dedans soy au Ciel qu’on luy restitua ses premieres forces, comme si ses prieres luy deussent valoir envers le cruel jeune homme? Narcissus à la suyte d’ung cerf avoit consumé tout ung jour, et la dolente Echo comme si elle luy eust servy au besoing de fidele secours, l’avoit suyvy de loing, se cachant tousjours ayant l’œil dressé affin de preveoir si quelque fremissant Cenglier, ou quelque Ours affamé venoit point [53r] pour meffaire à son her thresor non aultrement certes soliteuse, que Venus pour son bien aymé Adonis, duquel la piteuse et cruelle mort luy versoit au devant de ses yeulx. Finablement Narcissus perdit la veuë de la courante proye marry et travaillé oultre mesure. Dont voiant que le Soleil estoit sur le poinct de plonger ses ardens cheveux dans l’Ocean, et que Thetis s’esbaissoit de la soubdaine descente de l’œil du monde Phœbus, à haulte voix appelle ses compaignons pour les tirer hors de la forest, mais autant de foys qu’il les appelloit en huchant deca: «deca,» respondoit Echo, «deca, deca.» Souvent escria Narcissus ses compaignons esgarez, et Echo autant en reiteroit les voix. Parquoy Narcissus ne povant scavoir d’où telle voix procedoit, combien qu’il eust encores paour, si est ce qu’il s’en esmerveilloit trop fort, et dressant à travers le boys son regard, disoit: «Pourquoy ne viens tu icy devers moy?» Et elle pareillement respond à celuy pour qui elle souspire. «Pourquoy ne vient tu icy devers moy?» Prenant de là Echo, esperance de jouir de ses amours, lascha la bride à ses ardens desirs, et donna telle hardiesse à son hatif vouloir comme de venir vers Narcissus luy plorant et larmoiant par force d’amour dans le sein: et s’esfforce luy monstrer à plain en profondement souspirer sa douleur surpassante toute aultre douleur. Et à l’heure quoy qu’elle doubta et trembla de paour, si est ce qu’elle baisa la bouche de l’amy fugitif. Mais luy plus saulvaige que n’est pas la bische craintifve [53v] laquelle sent venir les chiens à la trace, avec plus grande fureur que la flesche ne despart de l’arc nerveux, deschasse arriere de soy la nymphe amoureuse. «Je puisse,» dist il, «lascive Damoiselle estre resolu en pouldre premier que je consente à tes vouloirs.» Dont Echo

Tales and Trials of Love 183 but never so blithe and pleasant. She began to move slowly toward the one whom she had very nearly renounced, as if apologizing for her approach, yet without intending to retreat. Then Cupid, whose flames of love were kindling inside of her, added her to his list of victims. He swiftly ensnared her feet and restrained her so that she could not move. Oh, poor Echo, how greatly do you need your lost voice? You are merely heavy with your thoughts and silent, doomed to follow the path of Narcissus, your new beloved. Alas, oh ladies-in-love, how many times did Echo, eager to speak to the one she loved, silently request that the heavens return her strength, as if her prayers would cause the cruel, young lad to notice her? Narcissus had spent an entire day hunting a deer and poor Echo had followed him from afar, as if she could have come to his aid if he had needed the help of his faithful servant. She hid the entire time, remaining alert in order to warn him if a frightful wild boar or famished bear tried [53r] to harm her dear Narcissus, no less forlorn than was Venus when her beloved Adonis was mercilessly and cruelly killed before her eyes.11 Finally Narcissus lost sight of his miserable, over-worked prey. Then, seeing that the sun was just about to plunge its ardent rays into the sea and that the sea goddess Thetis was marveling over the sudden descent of the omnipotent Phoebus,12 he called to his companions to leave the forest, but each time he shouted, “come hither,” Echo repeated: “come hither, come hither, come hither.” Each time that Narcissus cried out to his dispersed companions, Echo reiterated his cry. Since Narcissus could not determine where this voice was coming from, and although he was still afraid, on the other hand, he was amazed and, looking all around the woods, said: “Why do you not come closer to me?” Likewise, she responded to the one whom she so desired, “Why do you not come closer to me?” Echo, hopeful that she might fulfill her heart’s desire, set aside all restraint and mustered up the courage to approach Narcissus, all the while weeping and wailing, overwhelmed by the love she felt in her heart. With a profound sigh, she showed him the extent of her pain, which surpassed any other pain imaginable. And although her fear made her timid and fearful, nevertheless, she kissed her fickle beloved on the mouth. But Narcissus, more ruthless than a doe is fearful [53v] when she senses a pack of dogs following her path, chased away the love-struck nymph more fiercely than an arrow being shot from a forceful bow. “Foolish woman, I would sooner be struck by lightning than concede to

184 Comptes amoureux redoublant ses pleurs va seulement respondre. «Que je consente à tes vouloirs.» Ainsi refusée se despart la dolente Nymphe avec tel desdaing que la beste saulvaige chassée se remect dens le boys. Elle hait soymesmes: et mauldict celuy qui la conduict à l’aymer. Elle laisse le plain jour: et cherche les lieux obscurs pleins de noirs et hydeux umbraiges, plus desirant la mort, que la vie. En fin reduicte dedans une caverne obscure et tenebreuse, se guemente en son cœur en telle manière. «O quelque tu soys qui as du monde le gouvernement, si juste prier peult valoir quelque chose vueilles que cestuy, à qui nature a donné si excellente beaulté qu’il en a deschassé de soy toute doulceur humaine, soyt amoureux de soy mesmes et ne vive plus en paix, puis qu’il a en ce poinct desprisé tant de gentilles Damoiselles. Quant est de moy née à triste douleur et despris, je te prie Dieu souverain, me vouloir conduire à ma fin destinée. Las ne vive eternellement ce mien triste martire, si jamais furent concedez les vœux aux humbles supplians. Tires dehors de l’amoureux enfer cestuy mien pauvre cœur ou ne se treuvent que espines sans fleurs. Mourir en jeune aage est doulce chose à celuy, qui soustient la vie pire que la mort. [54r]Ainsi depriant la triste Damoiselle le Ciel luy donna manifeste signe qu’elle estoit exaulcée. Car elle sentit lors que ses membres ja laissoient l’humeur naturelle et nutritifve: comme a de coustume intervenir au boys qui se deseiche à la chaleur du Soleil: aussi sentit que la native chaleur se convertissoit en froidure: et peu à peu tout son corps devenir sec et dur: finablement cogneust qu’elle par la commiseration des Dieux estoit convertie en froide et dure pierre. Au fort luy laissa le Ciel l’ancienne voix: dont elle peult regerer la parole d’aultruy: et plus aulcun desir d’amour ne l’esguillonne: ains demeure seulette sans s’allegrer ou conjouir. Adoncques le juste Amour, lequel si bien à tard, neantmoins n’a de coustume de pardonner les offenses, attendoit tout lieu et temps opportun à ses desdaings pour faire des injures d’aultruy, puis des siennes, aigre et terrible punition. Or le soleil eschaffoit ja l’arc de midy au dos du Lyon son bien aymé repos et logis. Et à l’ombraige du boys ramu et fueilleux le pasteur doulcement sommeilloit pres de ses brebis, et le vilain lasse gisoit en repos piedz et mains estenduz: aussi les oisillons, la saulvagine et tout homme des champs se retiroient et se taisoient, fors seulement la cigalle qui ne demeure en son chant paisible. Quand le beau Narcissus ja lasse

Tales and Trials of Love 185 your advances,” he said. At that, Echo sobbed even more loudly and could only reply, “than concede to your advances.” Thus rejected, the sorrowful nymph went away as dejectedly as a hunted wild beast fleeing into the woods. She despised herself and cursed the one who had provoked her to fall in love. She fled from the light of day and sought out obscurity, preferring darkness and dismal shadows, for she felt more affinity for death than for life. Finally, having relegated herself to a dark and dim cave, she began to grieve in her heart in the following manner: “You, whoever you are, you who rule the world, if there is any value in the act of prayer, will you make it so that he—to whom Mother Nature gave such great beauty that there was no more room in his heart for kindness—may fall in love with his own image and live in constant torment, since he has unjustly disrespected so many respectable ladies? As for me, who was born into woeful grief and despair, I pray, holy God, that you may lead me to my ultimate destiny! Alas, may my weary martyrdom not last an eternity, if, in fact, you ever grant the wishes of your humble supplicants. Wrest my poor heart from this hell of love, full of thorns and void of fruit. To die in one’s youth is a sweet gift for those whose life is worse than death.” [54r] While the sorrowful woman was reciting her prayers in this manner, the heavens gave her a manifest sign that she had been heard. She suddenly felt her limbs begin to relinquish their natural, healthy vigor—much the same thing that happens to wood as it dries out in the heat of the sun. She also felt her usual warmth fade into coldness, and little by little her body became stiff. Finally, she realized that the gods had taken pity on her and transformed her into cold, hard stone. What’s more, the heavens took her voice from her, with which she had replicated the speech of others, and she no longer felt the sting of love’s desire. Thus she remained: alone, without relief or comfort. Meanwhile, righteous Cupid (who, although he may intervene at the eleventh hour, nonetheless has the custom of pardoning offenses) was waiting angrily for the opportune time and place to inflict his bitter and terrible punishment—on those governed by other gods as well as on his own subjects. Having reached its midday perch, the sun was now warming the lion’s back, a place where it delighted in casting its light, as if reveling in the comforts of home.13 And in the shade of the wood thick with branches and leaves, the shepherd was quietly sleeping near his sheep, and the weary peasant was resting peacefully, his arms and

186 Comptes amoureux de sa chasse, vaincu du chauld, et travaillé de courir cherchoit ou il se peult reposer, et tant chercha il qu’en fin il veit une fontaine en la vallée obscure yssant d’ung vif rocher là aupres si belle et [54v] claire, que je cuyde que Phœbus, Diana, ne aulcune Nymphe ou Pasteur n’en veirent jamais de telle. Car ceste Fontaine fut si vive et argentine que riens plus: ne ses eaues n’avoient jamais este troublées par les Bestes saulvaiges, ne par les oiseaulx: ne son bestail n’y avoit jamais abbrevé le Pasteur. Et le lieu d’alentour fut tout ordy d’herbe belle et druë, et par dessus la couvroit le naturel Rocher, d’ou elle prend sa force, que aulcun rainceau ne la vint à troubler. Et aultre quelque chose ne tumba oncques dedans tant estoit elle pure, necte, et coye. Puis la Vallée fut richement peuplée de divers arbres comme mirthes et Lauriers verdissans, et le terroer estoit depeinct de diverses et belles fleurs blanches, violettes, et bleues, et d’aultres de mille especes: lesquelles ont vie eternelle par les fraiches undes qui arrousent le lieu de tous endroictz. Si tost n’eust apperceuë Narcissus la fontaine, et ce lieu tant amoureux et delectable, qu’il y accourut pour soy reposer et refrechir. Parvenu là il se siet sur l’herbe druë et espaisse joyeulx à merveilles de s’estre là si à poinct embatu: et rememore à par soy tout l’estat de sa chasse, et le travail prins qu’il treuve assez legier. Car tousjours le bien la peine passée couvre d’ung doulx et amyable oubly. Las qui luy eust esté beaucoup meilleur se retrouver encores en la champaigne soubz la chaleur du Soleil? Mais de peu proffite chercher le moyen d’eviter les inconveniens, si le Ciel menasse. Doncque Narcissus comme ce-[55r] luy qui estoit plein de sueur pour se refreschir les mains et laver la face, s’encline sus le bort de la tranquille fontaine, à peine eust il fiché son regard sur le beau crystal qu’il veit là soy mesmes, qu’il n’avoit encores jamais veu. Alors il demeur esperdu et sans conseil: et si c’est son ymaige ne le scet, Attentif va contemplant avec ung subtil et amoureux regard l’exellente beaulté que luy faict à croire que quelque Déesse soit du hault ciel descenduë. Dont la saluë il, et reverentement s’encline devant elle. Adonc veit il à son saluer qu’avec pareil honneur la bouche de l’ymaige s’entreouvroit comme pour le resaluer: Mais il n’entend point de voix: aussi veoit il qui à son parler avec pareille ardeur veult l’ymaige demonstrer ung mesme vouloir et consentement. Luy contenuë ung peu sa voix, se retire en sus: mais se taisant il s’appercoit que

Tales and Trials of Love 187 legs outstretched. Also, the birds and wild beasts and all the men in the fields were withdrawn and silent, except for the cicada, which continued its peaceful song. Then the handsome Narcissus, already weary from the hunt, defeated from the heat and fatigued from his running, was looking for a place to rest. He continued his search until he finally found a spring flowing from a rocky crag jutting out into an isolated valley. The area was so beautiful and [54v] bright that I think that not even Phoebus, Diana, nor any nymph or shepherd has seen anything like it. For this spring was more brilliant and sparkling than anything imaginable; neither wild animals nor birds ever had disturbed its waters, nor had the shepherd’s herd taken refreshment from its waters. And the surrounding area was completely swathed by a beautiful, lush grass and sheltered above by the rock from which the spring found its source and which formed a natural overhanging. The spring was quite pure, pristine, and still, for no stray branch had troubled its waters, nor had any other object ever fallen into it. And the valley was rich with trees such as myrtles and green bays, and the ground was dotted with beautiful flowers of white, violet, and blue (and many other types as well), none of which ever withered due to the cool waters that refreshed the entire area. As soon as Narcissus caught sight of the spring and its surroundings (indeed, the area was irresistible and particularly well-suited for lovers), he hurried there in order to rest and rejuvenate. Once he got there, he sat on the lush, thick grass, marvelously happy to have found this place at just the right time. He reflected on his hunt and how easily he had accomplished his task, for once the pain has subsided, it is replaced by a calm, pleasant forgetfulness. How weary he felt! He would have so preferred to remain out in the hunt under the warmth of the sun. But if the sun’s heat is fierce, it does one little good to attempt to endure it without rest. Thus, Narcissus [55r] leaned over the edge of the tranquil spring in order to cool off his hands and wash the perspiration from his face. He had only just fixed his gaze on the beautiful, crystal-like surface when he saw his own image, which he had never before seen. Then, amazed and transfixed, he grew still, and if this was his own reflection, he did not realize it, for he continued to gaze bashfully and lovingly at that beautiful image, an image so exceptional that he believed that some goddess must have descended from the heavens. Then, he greeted her and leaned toward her. And when he greeted the image, he saw its mouth open as if to

188 Comptes amoureux L’ymaige ne dit mot: et qu’elle s’appareille d’escouter ne plus ne moins comme luy. Dont ne scait bonnement que devenir: et ja porte en son ame celuy desir que vray Amour imprime et fiche dans les cœurs, Ores il la contemple, ores il la prie, et ores il la conforte, puis se retourne à ses premieres esperances. Parquoy le cruel jouvenceau ouvrit aux souspirs et plainctes la porte de son amoureux cœur: et tel le foys il disoit. «Quelle si griefve doleur resent mon cœur qui de la mort a peur? Apres se plaignoit à la doulce eauë aymée. Qui est là dedans, dy moy, O unde sacrée? Qui ma ce jourd’huy derosbé à moymesmes? Ahi unde en mon dommaige, mais plustost [55v] à ma mort née, quand moy venant icy pour cuyder estancher ma soif tu as mis en mon cœur une aultre ardeur plus griefve cent mille foys? Mais ò quiconques soys tu là mortel ou Dieu (certes vrayement me resembles tu ung Dieu) ne soys, je te pry, desdaigneux de celuy qui t’ayme si tu as autant de courtoisie que de beaulté. Ayes souvenance de moy qui ay tousjours esté fugitif de celles qui m’ont voulu aymer, et que pour celle griefve faulte dont le vray Amour est offensé, j’en porte ores en t’aymant doublement la peine, et le martyre, qu’a merité celle ma cruaulté superbe. Las, de quantes belles et jeunes Damoiselles ay je desprisé les desirs, et evité d’estre surprins de l’ardant feu d’Amour? De quantes amyes en ceste part ay je prins à mocquerie et à jeu leurs aspres et dolentes peines et doleurs languissantes? A bon droict et justement les destinées m’ont conduict icy en ce boys espaix avec toy pour plaindre et lamenter de ma vie mal advisée et saulvaige. Et bien tost ce scay je bien, puis que tu uses de telle rudesse envers qui t’ayme, viendras tu à tard à celuy doloreux repentir avec moy. Las, pourquoy ne puis je verser et vivre dans les liquides et fluentes eaues? Car je descendrois maintenant pour demeurer avecques toy. Mais puis que cela ne m’est ores du Ciel concedé, que ne viens tu hors des eaues jusques à moy, et me consoler? La belle Ciprienne Venus n’eust à desdaing devenir passer temps avec son Adonis sur l’herbe verte et druë, et Juppiter assez souvent a prins ses plai-[56r] sirs en cavernes herbeuses: n’ayes pource honte d’issir hors, et te venir sollacier icy entre les belles florettes avec ton amy. Ainsi disant Narcissus dressa sa veuë en la vallée pensant que de là venoit la belle figure, puis retourne à la fontaine, s’escriant et gemissant

Tales and Trials of Love 189 greet him with equal reverence, but he heard not a sound even though he saw the image display the same will and consent to speak as he. He restrained himself from speaking for a bit; he leaned over, but in his silence, he realized that the image said nothing and that she seemed to listen no more nor less than he. He knew not what to make of this, and he already felt in his heart that desire that Cupid imprints on and affixes to our hearts. He gazed at her. After that he entreated her, and still after that he reassured her. Then he returned to his first approach. As a result, the cruel lad began to sigh and to mourn the feelings in his heart without remit: “What is this grievous pain in my heart that causes me to fear my death?” He then entreated the beloved reflection in the still water: “Tell me who you are in there, most holy water! Who are you who have stolen away with my heart? Oh, waters below, how you damage me! I came here intending to revive myself from my thirst, but [55v] you brought me to my death, and you inflicted my heart with another thirst, one that is worse than the first by a hundredfold. “But, oh, whether you are mortal or a god (and I certainly believe you to be a god), I beseech you! If your kindness equals your beauty, do not disdain the one who holds you dear. Take pity on me. I have always resisted those who wanted to love me, and for that grave mistake (which indeed offended Cupid) the pain and misery that I deserve to bear for my arrogant cruelty is doubled. What shame! How many beautiful, young ladies have I rejected, and for how long have I remained aloof to Cupid’s flames of passion? How many love-struck women have I mocked and derided for their bitter, agonizing pain and unremitting grief? “The fateful heavens were just and right to lead me here into this thick wood with you so that I might regret and lament my ill-advised and imprudent life. And I know well, since you display such harshness to the one who loves you, that if my misery moves you, it will be too late. Alas, why can I not pour myself into the ebb and flow of the waters and dwell within them, for if so, I would dive down there now in order to be with you? But since the heavens will not allow me to do that, will you not come up out of the waters to comfort me? Venus, that beautiful goddess from Cyprus, did not refuse to spend time with her Adonis on the thick, green grass, and Jupiter often took his pleasure [56r] in mossy caves.14 Do not be ashamed to come to the surface and to make merry here among the pretty flowers with the one who loves you.”

190 Comptes amoureux tendrement, car au mesme lieu retrouvoit la belle ymaige assise ou il l’avoit laissée. Mais apres qu’il eust longuement intentif pensé que celle qu’il veoit dedans l’eauë, mouvoit la main, la teste, le bras, le pied quand il mouvoit les siens, celle longue espreuve qui oste toute doubtance, luy monstre en fin que c’est l’ombre de soymesmes, dont il est ainsi surprins. Las, que de chaulx souspirs, et plaintes ameres emplissoit il le Ciel à ceste cause! Las qu’il alloit mauldissant ses dures destinées, qui l’avoient à ce conduict, et le cruel Amour, qui ne prenoit aulcune compassion de ses tormens! Certes c’estoit droicte pitié que de le veoir en ceste sorte. «O boys espaix,»disoit il, «ò region, ò vallée umbrageuse, vrayement ores vous voyez ce que ne veistes jamais! Ò fortune seule ennemye de mon heur, bien m’as-tu tiré hors du droict sentier. O vaines pensées lesquelles intrinquez les simples cœurs, dictes moy au moins ou mon bien reste et demeure! Las de moymesme je brusle, de moymesmes je suis amoureux, et sans fruict aulcun interrogue et respondz. Tousjours avec moy vient ce que plus je souhaiste et desire: ne si je le vouloys, ne s’en pourroit il despartir. Las combien auroys je plus d’aise et repos estant plus loing esloigne de mon espe-[56v]rance. O ceulx la plus heureux qui peuvent dire, Bien que soyons esloignez de noz tendres desirs: au fort esperons nous quelque jour en estre si prochains, qu’à tous jamais n’en porrons nous estre desjoinctz n’y separez. Contre tout droict est faict qu’en moy l’extreme pauvreté engendre richesse: dissention, paix: beaulté, servitude: et d’autant que trop je me plais, eschait que trop je me desplaise. Heureux est cil qui de sa beaulté ne tient, sinon peu de compte: car elle vient quelque foys par ce estre prisée d’aultruy: mais ce trop me priser faict que je desplaise à tous. Ainsi disant seiz sus l’herbe verte Narciccus, emplist les vallées de piteuses lamentations: ne encores pour ce pleurer ne se pert une seule drachme de son aveuglé desir, qui se multiplie dedans son triste cœur, il retourne à la fontaine, il parle à son umbre, il la contemple, et prie d’amours, il se guemente, et souspire en vain: Brief il se destruict et ayme tout ensemble. Vous luy eussiez veu, mes Dames, couler aval la face les chauldes larmes jusques dens la fontaine, qui par ce se troubloit. Dont luy semble il que son bien est empesché, et qu’il luy est tollu, quand l’ymage desirée se disparoit. «Las,» disoit il, «pourquoy t’en fuy tu,

Tales and Trials of Love 191 Saying this, Narcissus set his sight on the valley, thinking that her beautiful form had come from over there; then he returned to the spring, softly crying and moaning, for the lovely image he had seen before was still in the same place where he had left it. But after having considered intently and at length whether the one whom he saw in the water moved her hand, her head, her arm, her foot when he moved his own, he was greatly surprised that this lengthy test finally proved to him without a doubt that she was his own reflection. Oh, how he filled the heavens with passionate moans and bitter complaints of his realization! Oh, how he cursed cruel destiny, which had brought him here and cruel Cupid, who had no compassion for his torment! Indeed, it was quite pitiful to see him in this state. “Oh, you lands surrounding me,” he said: “Dense forest and shadowy valley, do you see now what you did not see before? Oh, fortune, the sole enemy of my happiness, you certainly led me down the wrong path. Oh, the vain thoughts with which you ensnare simple minds, tell me at least how to find favor! Alas, I burn with passion for myself; I am in love with myself; I ask myself questions, and I respond to no avail. In my very self lies my every hope and desire, and even if I so wished, never would it cease. “Alas, how will I ever find peace and tranquility if I am so far from hope? [56v] Oh, so much happier are those able to maintain hope of one day being reunited with their loved one and, despite their separation, believe that soon they will be joined so tightly together that nothing could put them asunder. How unjust it is that poverty engenders such wealth in me; dissension, peace, beauty, servitude, and that as much as I love myself, it befalls me to hate myself even more again. Happy is he who holds not to his beauty, or at least not much (for one may be prized by others), but by overly prizing myself, I am repugnant to everyone.” After saying this, Narcissus sat down on the grass and filled the valleys with the sound of his miserable wails. But not even his crying could lessen his irrational desire in the slightest. Rather, his wretched heart continued to swell with desire. He returned to the spring; he spoke to his reflection; he studied it and confessed his love; he pleaded and sighed in vain. In short, he at once tormented and loved himself. My ladies, if only you could have seen the hot tears rolling down his cheeks, dripping into the spring and rippling on the water’s surface.

192 Comptes amoureux ò doulce chose?» Ce disant il tent la main dens l’eauë pour retenir celluy, qui tant l’allume et destruict. Mais de tant qu’il plus mouvoit les undes, d’autant se cachoit l’ymaige aymée, il devient aveugle et muet, et douleurs non jamais cogneues et novelles assaillent son debile estomach, de sorte que par foibles[57r]se il s’escrie à Jupiter luy vouloir par une soudaine et briefve mort secourir il demeure là, chose piteuse, sans boyre ne menger, tant qu’il se sent petit à petit deffaillir: mais plus luy faisoit mal de l’umbre deffaillante que de luy mesmes. La Nymphe Echo quoy qu’elle eust esté auparavant refusée et que à bon droict elle fut merveilleusement irée contre luy, au fort voyant la piteuse mort du malheureux jouvenceau en print pitié et douleur: de manière que aultant de foys, que Narcissus s’escrioit «las las,» à lors replicquoyt elle de pareilz son «las, las:» et aultant de foys qu’il frappoit son estomach, elle semblablement rendoit ce mesme son de plainctes. La derniere voix de luy fut regardant en la fontaine. «Hé jouvenceau en vain aymé, A dieu:» et telle fut aussi la voix derniere d’Echo, «à dieu.» Adoncques clina le chef Narcissus soubz l’herbe, et la mort luy clouist ses yeulx. En ce poinct mesdames mourust Narcissus contempteur du vray Amour. Ne vueillez donc despriser le feu amoureux, si vous estes sages que telle fin, ou plus malheureuse ne vous advienne: ne vueillez dis je despriser vos serviteurs, ne vous esjouyssez de leurs martyres sur tant que vous aymez le ciel, et vous mesmes. Que vous les debvez aymer de mutuelle amour, l’exemple que j’ay recité vous le monstre assez: vous souvienne, je vous pry, que de peu sert le repentir. Il ne se treuve soubz le ciel, en quelconque region que ce soit temple du sien plus delectable, plus gratieux ne plus desiré. Qui ayme amour et le revere, il luy en [57v] prent bien. Qui le desprise, certes il fine malheureusement. Mais qui le debvra despriser puis que le ciel, comme vous voyez à ses puissance s’incline? Puis que Juppiter le souverain des Dieux, Mars dieux des batailles, et le sire de Delos ne peuvent eschever celle vertu si puissante et fatalle? Si telle est la justice d’Amour comme certes elle est, si me croyez dame Cebille, desormais bien povez oster de devant vos yeulx ce voile qui vous empesche de veoir la peine qui vous est prochaine, si vous perseverez en vostre opinion maulvaise. Vrayement il me prend pitié de vous veoir entre tant de scavantes Dames, qui sont icy seule dissentir. Car je me doubte que moult loing n’est la peine

Tales and Trials of Love 193 And when the image that he desired disappeared, it seemed as though his happiness was being hindered and taken away. “Alas,” he said, “why do you flee, my sweet thing?” Saying this, he stretched his hand into the water in order to grasp the image that so impassioned and destroyed him. But the more he disturbed the water’s surface, the more he marred the beloved image. He became blind and mute and doubled over from new pains that he had never felt before, so that in a [57r]15 moment of weakness he cried out to Jupiter to take pity on him and to rescue him with a quick and sudden death. He stayed there (it was a pitiful sight to behold) without drinking or eating until he felt his body slowly fail, but the waning reflection pained him more than his body. Although the nymph Echo had been refused before (and she was justifiably quite angry with him), she took pity on the poor lad on seeing his pathetic death and pain. As many times as Narcissus cried “woe is me; woe is me” she replied likewise, “woe is me; woe is me.” And as many times as he doubled over in pain, she repeated the same complaints. He released his last cry while looking into the spring: “Adieu, oh lad loved in vain.” And Echo’s last cry also was “adieu.” Then Narcissus laid his head on the grass, and death closed his eyes. “This, my ladies, is how Narcissus, condemner of true love, died. If you are wise, you will take care not to disdain love’s flames or else meet an even worse fate. “Do not, I tell you, scorn your suitors. Do not rejoice in their suffering as you rejoice in the heavens and in your own happiness. Rather, I urge you to feel a mutual love for them. My example amply demonstrates how important this is. “Remember, I tell you, that it is of little use to repent your error. There is no more delicious, more gracious, nor more desired place of worship in all the world under the heavens. He who loves and honors Cupid will have [57v] good fortune. He who denies Cupid’s sovereignty certainly will meet an unfortunate end. But who could despise him since, as you have seen, the heavens hold him in their favor?16 Remember that neither Jupiter, the sovereign god, nor Mars, the god of war, or Apollo, lord of Delos,17 could avoid that so powerful and fateful virtue that is love. “If this is Cupid’s manner of rendering justice (as it most certainly is), and if you believe me, Madame Cebille, you could yet remove that veil from your eyes that prevents you from beholding your imminent pain, unless

194 Comptes amoureux qu’en recepvrez, et alors asses de pleurs, et larmes comblée, et chargée vous souviendra à tard de mes salutaires admonitions. Fin du quatriesme compte Amoureux.

Tales and Trials of Love 195 you persist in maintaining your false opinion.18 It truly grieves me to see you be the sole dissenter among so many wise ladies. I do not doubt that you will be punished and that your punishment is not far off. And then, after crying an abundance of tears, you will remember my sound admonitions, but you will remember them too late.” Here ends the fourth Tale of Love.

196 Comptes amoureux COMPTE CINQUIESME

par madame Sapho.

Toutes les Dames en leurs celestes faces, furent merveilleusement commeues, car combien qu’elles feussent coulpables de leurs integritez, et qu’elles n’avoient encores faict faulte, dont elle peussent en raporter peine: si esse neant-[58r]moins, que les plusieurs doubtoient qu’il n’advint en aulcun temps qu’elles vinssent à cheoir en telz inconvenients: Madame Cebille seule encores persistoit en son erreur: et ne se fleschissoit non plus son haultain et endurcy cœur, que faict une grande montaigne battuë des impetueuses undes de la mer. Ce que voyant madame Sapho laquelle avoit jecté l’œil sur sa contenance pour cognoistre si elle persistoit, va prendre la parolle, et dict. Comment Denys le tyrant fut puny pour desrober aux temples des Dieux, avec les choses merveilleuses advenues à ung Amoureux et une jeune Damoiselle de la noble Ville de Ravennes en Italie. [woodcut] Denys le tyrant, mes Dames, après avoir pillé et desrobé les temples divins, et qu’il eust pol-[58v]lu ses cruelles mains des larcins perpetrez, et execrables, navigeoit avec vent prospere et bon. Parquoy pensant que la justice des dieux offensez et viollez ne luy deusse infliger la peine deuë, encores s’en railloyt et mocquoit disant que aux seulz violateurs des temples celestes estoit le bon heur imparty et donné. Mais le miserable ne s’appercevoit que l’attente a de coustume la gravité du supplice compenser. Ainsi en advient és punitions d’amours: Car il y a une noble Damoiselle nommée Cornine en la basse Bretaigne: laquelle pour avoir ung long temps sans peine en recepvoir, desprisé ung sien amy qui l’aymoit plus que soymesmes, fut par la Déesse Venus sus une haulte montaigne transportée, et la à une colonne d’acier liée à quatre grosse chaines de er: et l’environna l’indignée Déesse d’ung feu chauld et ardent, hault par dessus elle de trente piedz: de maniere que là elle brusle irremissiblement sans diminuer. Et celle merveille veoit on encores en la forestz Garboniere jusques à aujourd’huy, et si a plus de cinq cens ans que cela premierement advint.

Tales and Trials of Love 197 TALE FIVE Told by Madame Sapho. It was evident from the change in each lady’s usually delightful countenance that they were all extraordinarily shaken. Although none was guilty of anything more than maintaining her integrity and had done no wrong for which she could be punished, nevertheless [58r] several feared whether it were possible that at some future time they might fall into such an inconvenience. Madame Cebille alone still persisted in her erroneous ways, and her haughty and hardened heart was no more moved than a great mountain pounded by the impetuous waves of the sea. Seeing this, Madame Sapho,1 who had observed her expression in order to determine if she was continuing to persist in her error, took the floor and spoke. How Denys the Tyrant Was Punished for Stealing from the Temples of the Gods Along with the Strange Things That Happened to a Young Love-Struck Man and a Young Lady in the Noble Town of Ravenna in Italy.

“My ladies, Denys the Tyrant, after having pillaged and robbed the holy temples and [58v] contaminated his cruel hands by the execrable larceny that he had committed, was sailing at a good, quick clip.2 Since he believed that the gods whom he had offended and violated must not intend to inflict on him his just and deserved punishment, he was still laughing and scoffing, declaring that mirth is the sole reward of those who desecrate holy temples. But the villainous man was unaware that the length of the delay generally compensates for the gravity of the punishment. “This tends to be the case in matters of love, for there was a noble lady named Cornine in lower Brittany who went a long time without receiving punishment for scorning a suitor who loved her more than himself. The goddess Venus banished her to the top of a tall mountain, where she bound her with four large iron chains to a steel column. The indignant goddess surrounded her with a hot, burning fire thirty feet tall that blazed unremittingly and persistently. And now, over five hundred years later, one can still see this marvel in the peat bogs.3

198 Comptes amoureux Vous avez aussi bien ouy racompter ce que advint à une noble et belle Dame, de la ville de Ravennes en Italie: La punition n’en fut elle pas horrible et espouventable? Mais pource que par adventure madame Cebille ne la ouye racompter, presentement en brief je vous en feray le compte mesmement pour luy appertement demonstrer (car il me prend grande pitié d’elle) que tout ainsi que la pieté és nobles Dames est grandement [59r] recommandée et prisée: ne plus ne moins de la divine justice est aussi la cruaulté aigrement punie sans aulcune misericorde. A Ravennes tresantique Cité de la Romaigne, furent jadiz plusieurs nobles gentilz hommes: entre lesquelz des plus honnestes estoit tenu ung jeune filz nommé Nastagio. Or celluy Nastagio par le deces de son père, et d’ung sien oncle estoit demeuré, comme la commune voix estoit tresriche. Dont apres, ainsi qu’il intervient à jeunes hommes, estant à marier devint amoureux de la fille de Sire Paulo Traversier Damoiselle pour vray, trop plus noble que n’estoit pas ledict Nastagio. Auffort soubz esperance de la povoir attirer en son amour commenca à se maintenir le plus sumptueusement qu’il luy estoit possible, et à estre en tous ces faictz magnifique et excellent. Mais ombien qu’il feist toutes ces choses, non seulement sembloit que ce ne luy ayda, ains trop grandement empescha, et nuysit à son entreprinse amoureuse, tant se monstroit la Damoiselle aymée envers luy farouche et cruelle: possible à ce l’induisant ou sa trop grande beaulté ou pource qu’elle s’estimoit de plus nobles, et haulte extraction, de manière que Nastagio ne luy plaisoit, mais ne aussi prenoit aulcun plaisir à ses services et poursuytes. Dont le pauvre Nastagio estoit demy desesperé, comme celluy qui ne povoit plus avant comporter si cruelz refuz. Toutesfoys là il eust regard à soy, et ne voulut en ce poinct se mettre à mort: et pour remede delibera de l’abandonner, ou bien s’il po[59v] voit la recepvoir en hayne, comme elle y avoit prins. Mais il travailloit en vain, par ce que de tant que l’esperance de jamais en jouyr deffailloit, d’aultant se multiplioit l’amour dedans son ame dolente. Or doncques perseverant le jeune gentilhomme en son amour commencée, et en ses despenses desmesurees, bien veirent ses parens et amys, qu’en peu de jours il auroit tout despendu: parquoy amiablement plusieurs foys luy conseillerent de s’en aller hors pour quelque temps demeurer, et qu’en ce faisant, possible il obliroit toute celle pour qui son ame estoit en peine, et si ne seroit en danger de consumer ses biens

Tales and Trials of Love 199 “You have also heard tell about what happened to a lovely noblewoman from the town of Ravenna in Italy. Was her punishment not horrible and ghastly? But in the event that Madame Cebille has not heard it, I now will briefly tell you the story, as much to show her promptly (for I take great pity on her) the manner in which a noblewoman’s piety is greatly [59r] advised and valued, as to show her that divine justice has a way of bitterly and mercilessly punishing cruelty.” In Ravenna, a very ancient city in Emilia-Romagna, there once were many noble gentlemen, among whom the most honest was a young man named Nastagio.4 Following his father’s and his uncle’s death, Nastagio was staying on in the area, as was the custom. As it often happens with young men looking to marry, it was not long before he fell in love with the daughter of Sir Paulo Traversier, a true lady and rather more noble than was the said Nastagio. Hoping to attract her love, he began to dress himself in the most sumptuous manner he possibly could and aimed to dazzle and to excel in all that he did. But, despite all of his efforts, not only did it seem to him that nothing helped his cause, but that everything he did greatly impeded his progress and harmed his intentions, for the beloved lady continued to be fierce and cruel to him. Perhaps she thought her beauty too great for him or thought herself to be of a most noble and dignified ancestry, so much so that Nastagio did not please her nor did she take the slightest pleasure in his courtship or pursuit. Poor Nastagio was deep in despair over this, as one would be who has difficulty enduring such a cruel refusal. Nevertheless, he held on to his self-respect and did not want to end his life over this matter. And, in order to remedy the situation, he decided to abandon her, or at least [59v] to attempt to hate her as she had hated him. But his efforts were in vain, for as long as his hope of ever being united with her failed him, so too his love for her multiplied within his sorrowful heart. Thus, the young man persevered both in his love and in his excessive expenditures. His family and friends recognized that this behavior would lead him to financial ruin. For this reason, they gently advised him to go away for a short time, hoping that he would forget the one for whom his heart grieved and thus, would no longer be in danger of foolishly living beyond his means. Nastagio paid little heed to this advice, but finally his friends so implored and urged him that he agreed and decided to go away briefly and did not stop until he had assembled a great supply of horses and other

200 Comptes amoureux folement. De ce conseil ne tint pas grand compte Nastagio, au fort en fin tant fut il d’iceulx sollicité et importuné, qu’il s’accorda et promist de s’en partir en brief, et guieres n’arresta qu’il feist faire ung grand appareil de chevaulx et aultres choses necessaires comme s’il eust voulu venir en France ou en Hespaigne, ou en aultre lieu plus loingtain. Monté à cheval que fut Nastagio, se partit de Ravennes accompaigné de grande multitude de ses parens et amys, et s’esloigna seulement loing de la ville environ une lieuë en ung lieu sien nommés, Chasses: et là dist à ceulx qui l’avoient convoyé, qu’il deliberoit faire là sa demeurance, et qu’ilz s’en partissent. Eulx partiz commenca à mener la plus magnifique et joyeuse vie du monde, et tous les jours convioit les gentilz hommes, ses voisins à disner, et à soupper affin de passer temps avec eulx, et pour oublier celle qui le brusloit sans pitié. Or [60r] advint qu’ung jour de vendredy quasi à l’entrée du moys de May, le temps estant à merveilles beau et serein, qu’amour le reveilla, et le feit entrer dens le souvenir de sa cruelle amye: dont commanda à tous de le laisser seulet pour plus aisement penser à ses affaires d’amour: et en ce penser il se transporta à pied sans compaignie jusques dens la forestz prochaine: ou passée quasi la cinquiesme heure du jour, ayant cheminé pres d’ung quart de lieuë, n’estant recordz de boyre ne de manger ne d’aultre chose que de son amye, soubdainement luy sembla ouyr les criz, et plainctes doloreuses d’une femme. Parquoy entrerompu son doulx penser, haulse la teste pour veoir que c’estoit tout esmerveillé et estonné: puis voit venir à travers le boys qui estoit fort espaix d’arbres une miserable damoiselle toute nuë qui accouroit par devers luy deschevelée et toute esgratinée des ronces et buyssons, criant piteusement, ayde et mercy: et oultre ce veit Nastagio deux gros mastins noirs et hydeux qui suyvant la damoiselle, la mordoient de tous costez: et apres les mastins venoit ung chevalier armé d’armures noires, et monté sur ung cheval horrible et noir: si avoit ce chevalier son espée nuë en la main, et sembloit bien à le veoir qu’il fut grandement iré contre la damoiselle: car il ne la menacoit avec parolles espouventables que de la mort. Ce cruel spectacle mit grande merveille et espouventement au cœur de Nastagio: et en fin prenant compassion de la desfortunée dame, delibere la defendre et delivrer s’il peult, [60v] dont se treuvant desarmé et sans espée, accourut vistement à ung arbre, duquel il en arracha une branche, et se mit au devant des

Tales and Trials of Love 201 necessary things, as if he were going to France or to Spain or to another faraway place. Once he had mounted his horse, Nastagio left Ravenna accompanied by a large number of his family and friends, and he went only about two miles away to a place called Chiasso.5 Once there, he told his traveling companions that he was determined to stay there and that they should leave. Once they had left, he began to lead the most magnificent and joyful life imaginable, and every day he would invite the neighboring gentlemen to dinner and to supper in order to spend some time with them and in order to forget the one who was making him pine away mercilessly. Now, [60r] one Friday near the beginning of the month of May, when the weather was marvelously beautiful and serene, love reawakened within him, and the memory of his cruel beloved came flooding back. He then ordered everyone to leave him alone so that he could ponder his love life at leisure, and while absorbed in his thoughts, he wandered alone all the way to the neighboring forest. It was just after the fifth hour of the day,6 and he had walked nearly half a mile, thinking of nothing other than his beloved and not even remembering to eat or drink, when suddenly, he thought that he heard a woman screaming and crying out in pain. He awoke from his daydream, stunned and taken aback, and raised his head to see what the commotion was. He saw a miserable young lady emerging through the thick woods, completely nude, disheveled and scratched by briars and bushes. She was running toward him, crying pitifully: “Help, save me!” Then Nastagio saw the two great, black, hideous mastiffs that were pursuing the lady and snapping at her heels.7 And after the mastiffs came a knight armed with black armor and mounted on a horrible, black horse. The knight was wielding his sword, and from the looks of it, he seemed to be greatly angry with the lady, for he was screaming curses and death threats at her. This cruel spectacle evoked great amazement and fear in Nastagio’s heart. Finally, taking pity on the unfortunate lady, he determined to defend her and to deliver her if he could. [60v] Since he was unarmed and without a sword, he quickly ran to a tree, from which he tore a branch and placed himself in front of the dogs and the knight, who were coming after him like thunder. But, when the knight saw him he cried from afar: “Nastagio, do not worry yourself with our quarrel. Leave it to my dogs and to me to take care of this. This terrible and perverse woman earned this treatment.” Having said this,

202 Comptes amoureux chiens et du chevalier qui venoit apres comme fouldre. Mais le chevalier ce voyant, luy escrie de loing: «Nastagio, ne t’empesche de nostre debat: laisse faire à mes chiens, et à moy pour executer ce, que ceste maulvaise et perverse femme a merité.» En ce disant les horribles et enragez chiens acconsuyrent la pauvre miserable damoiselle et chascun d’eulx la print par les flans, et y plongerent leurs envenimées et cruelles dens, de sorte qu’ilz la verserent par terre si durement que au cheoir la pauvre damoiselle, jecta ung doloureux cry qu’on eust peu entendre de deux mille pas loing. Le chevalier par ce non rendu plus pitoyable, arrive sus elle, et descent du cheval hastivement pour sus elle executer son maulvais vouloir. Dequoy Nastagio fut demy enragé tant que luy qui estoit homme grandement courageux et hardy accourut: jusques au Chevalier, et luy dict: «Certes chevalier c’est grand vilennie à vous qui estes homme et armé de vouloir mettre la main sus une pauvre femme nuë et sans secours de nully: et encores qui est signe de plus grande cruaulté, vous luy avez mis après deux cruelz mastins comme si ce fut une beste saulvaige, or quoy que me ayez nommé par mon nom, et qu’il semble que me cognoissez, si esse que je la veulx defendre à mon pouvoir.» Le chevalier luy va respondre, «O Nastagio je te voy trop esmerveillé de mon faict. Mais affin que plus tu n’empesches mon entreprinse, je [61r] te veulx declarer la cause de mon inimytié à l’encontre de ceste maulvaise Dame. Saches Nastagio que jadiz je fuz de la mesme Terre et Cité que tu es, et trop plus de ceste cy je fuz amoureux, que tu n’es pas maintenant de la belle fille de Sire Paulo Traversier. Ceste cy par son orgueil et cruaulté m›a conduict en l’aymant à ceste malheureté, que par impatience je m’ostay la vie cruellement me transpercant le cœur de la mesme espée que je tiens. Donc me convint descendre aux enfers, ou le juste juge Minos prenant douleur de ma desadventure, commanda à la parque Attropos de tost rompre le dernier fil de ma cruelle amye, cela faict la cause d’entre nous deux jugée, fut conclut et arresté par arrest que à jamais je la poursuyveroie ca sus en ce monde comme ennemy pour la deffaire, et luy arracher ce cruel cœur hors du ventre, et qu’elle à tousjours demeureroit en celle peine en mourant de mille mors, comme celle qui avoit indigné les haultes puissances d’Amour en ce resjouyssant de mon trespas avancé. Doncques toutes et quantes foys que je la puis acconsuyvir, avecques ceste mortelle espée dont je me tiray la vie du

Tales and Trials of Love 203 the horrible, enraged dogs followed the poor, miserable lady and each one of them grabbed her by the legs and sunk in their venomous, cruel teeth. They dragged her to the ground so brusquely that while falling, the poor lady let out a painful cry that one could have heard from miles away. The knight, unmoved, came up to her and hastily dismounted his horse in order to subject her to his wrath. Nastagio, quite a courageous and gallant man, was enraged by this, and he approached the knight and said, “Certainly, knight, this woman must have committed a great misdeed to merit that you, a man—and an armed one at that—lay a hand on this poor, unclothed, and abandoned woman. And your cruelty does not stop there, for you have placed her between two brutal mastiffs as if she were a wild beast. Since you called me by name, and you seem to know me, I wish to defend her as best I can.” The knight responded, “Oh, Nastagio, I see that you are rather taken aback by my actions. But, so that you do not hinder me from my task, I [61r] want to explain to you the cause of my enmity against this terrible lady. “I want you to know, Nastagio, that I once lived in the same region— in fact in the same town—as you, and I was much more in love with this particular woman than you are now with the lovely daughter of Sir Paulo Traversier. It is because of this woman that I lead this horrible existence, for she encouraged me to love her out of pure arrogance and cruelty. I was so impatient to win her that I brutally took my own life. I pierced my heart with the very same sword that I am holding. “For this misdeed, I earned my place in Hell, where the righteous judge Minos took pity on my misadventure and ordered Atropos (one of the three Parcae) quickly to break the tie binding me to my cruel beloved.8 Once this was accomplished and the case between the two of us judged, it was concluded and declared that I would return to the world above and pursue her forever as an enemy. Since she had provoked Cupid’s ire by rejoicing in my untimely death, my objective would be to destroy her and to rip her cruel heart out of her chest so that she might live forever in this pain, the pain of dying a thousand deaths. “Therefore, each and every time that I pursue her with this mortal sword with which I took my own life, I kill her cruelly in turn. I slice open her stomach and tear out her impetuous and cold heart—a heart that has never felt the sweetness of love nor of pity—and I disembowel her (which you soon will be able to see). My horrible and cruel dogs then enjoy the

204 Comptes amoureux corps, je la tuë cruellement, et luy ouvre l’estomach, et luy arraiche ce cœur impiteux et froid, auquel n’entre oncques doulce amour ne pitié, avecques toutes les entrailles (comme tu pourras briefvement assez veoir) et en repaismes horribles et cruelz chiens. Cela faict, elle comme si, celle n’eust esté tuée et morte, resuscite pour continuer sa mortelle peine, et se met à la fuyte [61v] comme devant, et chiens, et moy apres la poursuyvons tant qu’a chascun vendredy droictement à ceste heure en sa mort je saoulle la haine que j’ay contre elle, et sont mes cruelz chiens repeuz. Les aultres jours ne croy point que nous ayons repos aulcun. Car en plusieurs pars de la region je la consuys, et là je luy crie mercy de mon meffaict de despriant me vouloir donner jouyssance de mes amoureux desirs. Elle lors n’en veult riens faire, dont me convient la poursuyvir comme ennemy mortel. Et celuy sien torment durera autant d’années comme elle a esté à moy dure et rebelle. Parquoy mon amy Nastagio, tu ne luy peulx secourir en ceste tribulation. Adoncques se tira arriere Nastagio si timide, craintif et estonné que tous les cheveux de la teste luy dresserent, et regardant vers la miserable Damoiselle commence paoreux à attendre à ce que feroit le Chevalier: lequel finies ses raisons avec Nastagio, comme ung chien enragé ayant son espée nuë en la main courut sus à la miserable femme: laquelle à genoulx, et retenuë des deux mastins piteusement requeroit pardon. Mais ce riens ne luy vallut: car le chevalier de toute sa force la frappa parmy l’estomac, tant qu’il la jecta par terre.

[62r]

* [woodcut]

Cependant l’infelice ne scavoit que plaindre piteusement pour tous secours. Puis le chevalier sacca ung cousteau pendant à sa seincture, et d’iceluy luy ouvrit les rains, et luy tyra hors le cœur du ventre, et le jecta (chose horrible et stupende à veoir) à ses deux cruelz et affamez mastins qui en peu d’heure eurent tout devoré. Apres ce guieres n’arresta que la Damoiselle malheureuse se levat debout (comme si jamais elle n’eust esté occise) et commence à fuyr par devers la marine: et chiens apres qui souvent la mordoient avec si grande fureur, que c’estoit droicte pitié à veoir. Aussi le

Tales and Trials of Love 205 offal. Once this ritual is complete, it is as if she had never been killed or even wounded; she is reborn; she resumes her mortal suffering, and she begins to flee [61v] as before, with both the dogs and me chasing after her. Each Friday at precisely this hour, her death sates my hatred of her, and my vicious dogs sate their hunger. On the other days, we are hardly able to rest. I follow her all around these parts, crying out for mercy for my misdeed and begging her to have the good will to let me assuage my desire. She of course wants to have none of it, thus I must pursue her as a mortal enemy. And this, her personal torment, will last as many years as she was cruel and contrary toward me. For this reason, Nastagio, you cannot save her from this tribulation.” Thus, Nastagio withdrew, so timid, fearful, and stunned that all the hairs on his head stood on end and, looking at the miserable lady, began to anticipate with dread what the knight would do. After having explained himself to Nastagio, he drew his sword and ran toward the miserable woman with the fury of a mad dog. She was on her knees, held down by the two dogs and begging pitifully for mercy. But her efforts were in vain, for the knight ran her through with all his might and slung her to the ground.

* [62r]

Meanwhile, the unfortunate woman could do nothing other than cry pitifully for help. Then the knight wielded a knife that had been hanging from his belt, splayed her open, tore her heart out from her chest and threw it (a horrible, astonishing thing to see!) to his two vicious, ravenous mastiffs, which had devoured everything within less than an hour. The spectacle had scarcely ended when the unfortunate lady got up (as if she had never been killed) and began to flee toward the sea, the dogs chasing after her, snapping at her constantly with such great fury that it was right pitiful to see. The knight in turn quickly remounted his

206 Comptes amoureux chevalier soubdain remonté et prins son estoc en mains, la poursuyt de tout son pouvoir. Ainsi en peu d’heure s’esloignerent de la veuë de Nastagio de manière qu’il ne les peult plus veoir. Si se partit du lieu ou ce estoit advenu, pensant que la vision, qui tous les vendredis advenoit, luy pourroit bien ayder à acquerir l’amour de sa Dame fille de Sire Paulo Traversier. Doncques manda aulcuns de ses pa-[62v]rens et amys, ausquelz il dit: Vous m’avez par plusieurs foys admonesté de laisser mes folles poursuytes d’amours, et despenses que pour ce je fais excessivement. Mais je n’en feray riens si vous ne faictes tant que le Sire Paulo Traversier, sa femme et sa fille, et leurs parens viennent en vostre compaignie disner avec moy ce vendredy prochain venant en ung lieu de celle forest que je leur monstreray, et là vous scaurez à quelle occasion ce fais je. La requeste de Nastagio leur sembla assez raisonnable et facile. Si s’en retournerent à Ravennes et quand le jour fut venu que Nastagio leur avoit designé, ilz feirent tant que Sire Paulo Traversier promist d’y venir ensemble avec sa femme, et sa belle fille: laquelle pour la vielle hayne qu’elle portoit à Nastagio feit assez reffuz de s’y trouver. Combien qu’en fin vaincuë des prieres et commandemens de son père y alla avec sa mere et aultres ses voisines. Nastagio feit appareiller le festin le plus sumptueusement qu’il luy fut possible sans y riens espargner, et droictement au lieu ou l’adventure avoit de coustume de s’apparoir feit dresser les tables. Dont apres qu’ilz furent assis chascun en son ordre, mesmes la fille sa cruelle amye assize au lieu plus prochain, ou se debvoit faire le deschirement de la miserable Damoiselle, et à peine servy le dernier mets, voicy qu’on va ouyr horribles et estranges clameurs, non aultrement certes que les voix des miserables Citoiens Romains estoient, quand leur Ville fut prinse et saccagée par les Casariens [63r] gens d’armes. Laquelle chose donna gros espouventement à toute compaignye, et n’y avoit celuy qui ne trembla de belle paour tant estoit le bruyt horrible et espoventable, vous eussiez dict que les arbres de la forestz avec une grande fureur et impetuosité, telle que survient dans le grand Ocean par l’impulsion des horribles vents quand il eslieve ses undes jusques aux nuës, apres les descend jusques dens les bas enfers avec ung horrible fremissement tumbans l’ung sus l’aultre, devoient confondre le lieu jusques dedans les abismes. A basse et foible voix chacun demandoit à son voisin quelle chose ce pouvoit estre, et ne scachans respondre tous se

Tales and Trials of Love 207 horse, took his sword in his hand and pursued her with all his might. It was not long before they were so far from Nastagio’s view that he could no longer see them. And then he left the scene of the crime, thinking to himself that this spectacle, which took place every Friday, might in fact help him to win over his beloved, the daughter of Sir Paulo Traversier. For that reason, he sent for all of his family [62v] and friends, to whom he said, “You have warned me several times to abandon my foolish pursuit of love and my life of excess. But, I intend to change nothing unless you come to dine with me next Friday and arrange for Sir Paulo Traversier, his wife, his daughter and their family to accompany you. I will show you a place in the forest where we will dine, and once there, you will understand why I have made this request.” Indeed, they found Nastagio’s request reasonable and undemanding. And so they returned to Ravenna, and when the day came that Nastagio had designated, they arranged for Sir Paulo Traversier to promise to come to the event, along with his wife and his lovely daughter, who, due to the hatred that she harbored for Nastagio, refused repeatedly to attend. Finally, defeated by her father’s entreaties and demands, she went there with her mother and other neighbors. Sparing no expense, Nastagio prepared the most sumptuous feast imaginable, and he arranged the tables right where the spectacle typically occurred. The guests were all seated so that they would have a clear view of where the miserable lady soon would be dismembered (his cruel beloved had the best line of sight). The last course had only just been served when they heard a horrible and strange commotion that certainly must have rivaled the screams heard in Rome when the imperial troops pillaged and sacked [63r] the town.9 This caused great distress to the entire party; indeed all were trembling with intense fear. The noise was so terribly appalling that one would have thought that all the trees in the forest would come crashing down with reckless furor, leaving nothing more than a crater of devastation in their wake, just as in the vast expanses of the ocean when the force of the raging winds stirs up waves that graze the heavens at their crest and then hurtle down to the depths of Hell, falling one on top of the other in tumultuous succession. In a weak and feeble voice, the guests asked their neighbors what was happening and, not knowing how to respond, everyone rose to their feet and caught sight of the dreadful hunt across the woods: the lady fleeing, the dogs already at her heels,

208 Comptes amoureux dresserent en pied, et commencerent veoir à travers le boys la douloureuse chasse, la damoiselle fuyante, les chiens qui ja presque la tenoient, et le Chevalier criant et venant apres comme si ce fut droicte fouldre cheant du Ciel. Entre les adsistans se leva grande clameur: Car il n’y avoit cil qui meu de compassion n’escria au Chevalier de laisser la damoiselle, et les plusieurs se meirent en avant les espées aux poings pour luy ayder. Mais le Chevalier parlant à eulx, comme il avoit faict auparavant à Nastagio, non seulement les feit tirer arriere, mais tous les espoventa et remplist de merveille, et faisant ce qu’il y avoit faict aultresfoys, autant qu’il y avoit de dames (or en y avoit il assez, lesquelles avoient esté parentes et de la dolente damoiselle et du Chevalier, et lesquelles se souvenoient assez des amours et de la mort de l’ung et de l’aultre) doloreusement [63v] ploroient, comme si se deschirement et maulvaise desfortune estoit advenu à elles mesmes. Apres que le chevalier eust achevé celuy horrible spectacle, et que la Damoiselle resuscitée s’en fut fouye, tous ceulx de l’assemblée qui eurent ce veu, meirent le cas advenu en termes, et en parlerent diversement si esbays que riens plus. Mais entre aultres la paour et craincte de la fille de Sire Paulo fut si grande que à peu qu’elle ne mouroit de detresse: car elle avoit chascune chose distinctement veuë et ouye, et cognoissoit que la chose plus à elle que à nul aultre touchoit: et ne cessoit de se souvenir de la cruaulté dont envers Nastagio elle avoit tousjours usé. Parquoy ainsi, comme Orestes avoit les horribles Furies suyvantes apres qu’il eust sa mere occise, luy sembloit qu’elle eust tousjours à doz les mastins enraigez, et Nastagio pour elle tuer et murdrir. Brief si grande fut la paour conceuë de la cruelle vision, mais neantmoins veritable, que affin que l’inconvenient ne luy advint aussi, le lendemain envoya une sienne secrette Chamberiere par devers son amy Nastagio, et par icelle luy manda qu’il print pitié d’elle, et que ja trop se repentoit de l’avoir faict tant endurer, et luy avoit esté rebelle, qu’il luy pleust venir en sa Maison, et que sans faillir la trouveroit toute preste d’accomplir ses voluntez. *

Tales and Trials of Love 209 and the knight screaming and pursuing her at lightning speed. A great clamor arose among those present, for all were moved with compassion and cried out to the knight to release the lady. Several rose and drew their swords and attempted to help the lady. But the knight, speaking to them as he had to Nastagio, not only made them withdraw, but he sickened all of them and filled them with fear while he carried out his customary ritual. All of the ladies present (and there were quite a few who had been family of both the sorrowful lady and of the knight, and who remembered quite well the love and the death of both) cried out in agony [63v], as if they were experiencing the attack and punishment themselves. Once the knight had accomplished his horrible display, and the lady had come back to life and fled, all of the guests who had witnessed the sight were so frightened that they felt compelled to articulate their concern and discussed what had happened at length. But among all the witnesses, the fear and horror of Sir Paulo’s daughter was so great that she nearly died of her distress, for she had clearly seen and heard everything that had happened and understood that the ritual applied to her more than anyone else, and she could not stop remembering the cruelty with which she had always treated Nastagio. For this reason, just as Orestes was pursued by the horrible Furies after he had murdered his mother, she feared that she would always have the enraged mastiffs and Nastagio at her back, aiming to kill and murder her.10 So great was the fear conjured up by this cruel, but nevertheless veritable, spectacle that in order to prevent such an inconvenience from happening to her, the following day she sent her own secret maid-servant to her friend Nastagio and had her ask him to take pity on her, to tell him that she also was repenting mightily for having made him endure so much and for having fled him and that if it pleased him to come to her home, he would without fail find her quite ready to fulfill his heart’s desire.

*

210 Comptes amoureux [64r] Comment Nastagio joyt à son plaisir de ses Amours: et Madame Ceblle persiste en sa folle et rigoureuse opinion. [woodcut] Par ce moyen obtint Nastagio de ses doulces amours la jouyssance: et les aultres Dames et matrones. Lesquelles auparavant s’estoient diversement excusées vers leurs loyaulx amys, dés lors en avant en prindrent toute amoureuse pitié de manière que depuis les Aymans n’eurent juste occasion d’en lamenter et faire plainctes. En ceste facon parfournissant son veritable compte Madame Salphionne, les dames ne furent moins estonnées que ceulx qui avoient adsisté au disner de Nastagio, madame Cebille seule demeuroit sans s’esbayr tournant le tout à fable, et à mensonge: et se rioit de ses compaignes pourtant qu’elles monstroient une manière paoreuse et puerille. Dont madame Salphionne merveillement desplaisante non aultrement omina sur elle, que feit [64v] le fort Hector sus l’inhumain Achilles. Il me desplairoit grandement, dict elle, Dame Cebille, s’il venoit quelque mesadventure: mais voyez (car dens mon estomach je sen ne scay quelle divine esmotion qui me contrainct à prophetiser) que par voz despris aujourd’huy je ne vous soye vraye prophetise. Je vous annonce pour vray que dans quinze jours tel exemple par la justice du vray Amour, lequel tousjours vous avez desprisé, se fera en vous, que vous confesserez la pitoable Damoiselle poursuyvie des Mastins et du Chevalier avoir esté heureuse en sa peine, au regard de vous la plus malheureuse et infelice Dame que je cognoisse aujourd’huy. Madame Salphionne se teust à tant, et ne fut plus parlé de ceste matiere: ains feirent mettre les tables, et toutes se seirent faisant la plus grande chere du monde.

Tales and Trials of Love 211 [64r] How Nastagio Enjoyed the Fruits of His Love at His Leisure, and How Madame Cebille Persisted in Her Foolish and Unmerciful Opinion.

This is how Nastagio came to enjoy the sweet fruits of his love, and other young maidens and matrons gave in to their own desires, as well. Before, the latter had excused themselves from their faithful suitors’ advances in a variety of manners. But from that point on, they took loving pity on them, so much so that their suitors truly never had the occasion to grieve, nor to protest. Madame Sapho having ended her tale in this manner, the ladies at the gathering were no less astonished than those who had attended Nastagio’s dinner. Only Madame Cebille remained unmoved. Judging the whole to be mere fable and lies, she laughed at her companions, believing them to be timorous and childish. Madame Salphionne, the ladies’ hostess, was greatly displeased by this attitude and scowled at Madame Cebille just as [64v] did the great Hector at the inhumane Achilles.11 “It would greatly displease me, Madame Cebille,” she said, “if some sort of misfortune were to come over us (for I feel stirring in my gut some strange sort of heavenly spirit that compels me to prophesize). It is apparent by your disdain today that you do not consider me a true prophetess. I swear to you in all certainty that in fifteen days, Cupid, whom you have always despised, will make a just example of you and that you will proclaim that poor, unfortunate lady chased by the mastiffs and the knight to have been fortunate indeed in her punishment compared to you, the most miserable and unlucky lady whom I know today.” At that, Madame Salphionne held her peace, and not another word was uttered about the matter. On the contrary, they set the tables, and everyone sat down to enjoy the festive merrymaking.

212 Comptes amoureux De la bonne chiere que ne feit madame Salphionne aux Dames, et du bon recueil qu’elles feirent aux six jeunes Hommes Lyonnais.

Le lendemain les belles Dames au plus matin levées, comme celles qui estoient tant gayes par l’instinct amoureux, qui ainsi les demenoit, voiant que le Soleil demonstroit signes de belle journée au possible se meirent ensemble en chemin pour aller à l’esglise de la paroisse, ou elle ar-[65r]riverent si à poinct, qu’elles trouverent le Curé du dict lieu tout prest et revestu pour dire et celebrer la messe. Chascune se mect en ses prieres et devotions: apres ce, la messe dicte, retournerent au logis pour disner: Si feirent la plus grand chiere du monde: car madame Salphionne y avoit donné tel ordre que riens n’y desfailloit. Mais à peine avoit on servy le dernier mectz, que voicy arriver de compaignie six jeunes hommes lyonnois: desquelz les aulcuns là scavoient estre leurs amyes et dames, dont n’est de merveille si elles furent aises et satisfaictes en leurs voluntez fors madame Cebille, laquelle persistoit en sa vieille erreur de ne se jamais assubjectir à l’amour. Madame Salphionne descendit tost à la porte pource qu’ilz faisoient semblant de passer oultre, et qu’ilz estoient conviez ailleurs: mais tant feit bon debvoir la dame qu’elle les arresta, moytie par prieres, moytie par force avallant avec une joyeuse manière de faire les brides aux chevaulx. Parquoy ainsi arrestez et descenduz monterent tous en la salle, et saluans treshonnestement les belles dames s’asseirent ensemble avec elles à table: non sans tenir plusieurs beaulx et joyeulx propos des nouvelles de la ville, et de ce que y estoit intervenu elles estant aux vendenges. Ce pendant il y avoit ung jeune paige qui jouoit de l’espinette au son de laquelle se remplissoit la salle de celeste melodie. La belle Salphionne estoit tant pleine de joye que à peine on le pourroit dire pour la survenuë de tant honnestes gens. Si luy estoit advis [65v] qu’elle fut la Déesse Venus en son palais de Paphos lors qu’elle festoie le Dieu Mars nouvellement arrivé. [woodcut] Les tables levées commencerent ensemble à danser et à baler en la plus grand joye et solas, que se pourroit imaginer. Car il y en avoit

Tales and Trials of Love 213 Of the Merrymaking That Madame Salphionne Enjoyed with the Ladies, and of the Hearty Welcome That They Extended to the Six Young Men from Lyon. The lovely ladies were so drunk with love that its effect caused them to stir early in the morning on the following day. Seeing that the sun was showing definite signs of a beautiful day, they set out together to go to the parish church, where they arrived [65r]12 in such good time that they found the priest dressed in his robes and ready to recite and celebrate mass. Each woman began her prayers and devotionals. Once they had said mass, they returned home for dinner. And they enjoyed the most festive merrymaking, for Madame Salphionne had ordered that no expense be spared. But just as the last course was being served, six young men from Lyon arrived, many of whom knew that the ladies were there and had friends among them. For this reason, it is not surprising that the ladies were cheerful and delighted by their unexpected arrival, except Madame Cebille, who persisted in her old, erroneous way of never subjecting herself to love. Madame Salphionne quickly went to the door because the men were making motions to leave, as if they were expected elsewhere. But, the lady was quite adept at retaining them, partially by persuasion, partially by force, offering generously to unbridle their horses. And thus retained and unburdened of their horses, they all entered the hall and, greeting the lovely ladies most courteously, they sat down with them at the table, but not without exchanging some pleasing and joyous news from town about what had happened there since the ladies had been away for the vendange. All the while, there was a young page playing a set of pipes, the sound of which filled the hall with a divine melody. The lovely Salphionne was indescribably delighted by the unexpected arrival of these courteous men. They insisted [65v] that she resembled the goddess Venus in her palace at Paphos, celebrating the recent arrival of the god Mars.13 When the tables had been pushed aside, they began to dance together as joyfully and merrily as one could imagine. And some of them gladly would have given up all other luxuries of life in order to prolong forever this pleasing, worldly delight. Once the round was finished, Madame Salphionne began to speak to the young men: “In your unexpected company, I am at once aggrieved and joyful, dear friends. Aggrieved that you

214 Comptes amoureux de telz qui eussent voluntiers tous aultres quelzconques delices quictez pour estre à jamais en celle plaisante volupté. Le bail finy va addresser ainsi sa parolle Madame Salphionne aux jeunes hommes. «Je suis presentement en vostre survenuë aulcunement marrye et joyeuse, chers Amys, marrye que n’avez esté icy avec nous depuis dix jours en ca: pource que auriez receu vostre part des joyes et lyesses par nous demenées: et aussi ouys les tresbeaulx comptes et propos d’Amour par chascune de nous à son tour racomptés: et je suis joyeuse que ores estes arrivé tout à point pour en ouyr le dernier, dont la charge en est à celle jeune et tresbelle dame que voiez là (or leur monstroit elle la plaisante et facunde Cassandre qui avec ung reposé et honneste silen[66r]ce attendoit l’heure de commencer son compte) pourtant je conseille que nous nous transportions au lieu à ce designé dans nostre Jardin. Respondirent les jeunes hommes: «Certes de vostre bon vouloir, madame, nous vous remercions: et attendu la bonne chiere que nous faictes, voluntiers obeyrons à vos gentilz et gracieux desirs, et des belles dames vos hostesses qui sont icy presentes. Si ne nous despartirons de vostre maison sinon soubz le vostre et le leur congé: pource allons ou il vous plaira.» Adoncques yssirent de la salle eulx s’entretenans deux à deux par les mains: et cheminans au long d’une Tonne tapissée naturellement de verdure et roses de rosiers fleurans comme basme, arriverent en ung jardin grand et spacieux. [woodcut] Au meillieu duquel sailloit une belle fontaine d’eaue vive et argentine toute environnée de divers arbres, sur lesquelz ouyoit on oiseaux de diverse espece chantans de leurs petites gorgettes tant melodieusement que c’estoit ung droict paradis à l’ouyr. L’eaue dicelle fontaine y estoit conduicte par [66v] petitz canaulx de la prochaine montaigne, ou estoitent les plantureuses vignes de la dame Salphionne: et tant proprement estoit dispercée qu’il s’y veoit en divers lieux du jardin petitz ruisseaulx (que gardoit les herbes en fleurs de l’ardeur du Soleil) fluans vers ung certain Vivier: ou l’on pouvoit pescher poissons de toute sorte, et en telle quantité qu’on vouloit.

Tales and Trials of Love 215 were not here with us for the past ten days because you would have had your share of our pleasure and merriment, and you also would have heard the very lovely tales of love that each one of us told in turn. And I am joyful that now you have arrived just in time to hear the last, which will be told by this young and very lovely lady whom you see over there (at that she pointed out to them the attractive and voluptuous Cassandre, who, in a reserved and quietly courteous manner [66r], was waiting to take the floor). However, I suggest that we go outside to the garden, where we have a place specially designated for our storytelling.” The young men replied, “We certainly thank you for your good will, Madame. And given the merriment that we just enjoyed, your wish—and that of the lovely ladies your hostesses who are here present—is our command, and so we will not leave your home unless it is with your—and their—permission. We shall go where it pleases you.” Then, they all left the hall hand in hand and walked along an arbor woven with nature’s greenery and with roses burgeoning from bushes like balm until they arrived at a great and spacious garden. In the middle of the garden issued forth a beautiful fountain of crystal-clear, running water surrounded by a variety of trees, in which one could hear birds of different types warbling so melodiously that it was truly paradise to hear. The water from the fountain flowed down little channels from the nearby mountain, where Lady Salphionne’s abundant vineyards were located, and was so neatly dispersed that [66v] little streams could be seen all around the garden (which kept the plants flowering in the beating sun) flowing toward a clear pond, where one could catch fish of all types and in the desired quantity. As for the fruits in the garden, I know for certain that such bounty cannot be found in all the world, except in the gardens of Alcinous, the likes of which no longer exist, from which fruits could be picked that no one could come by anywhere else, regardless of how much gold or silver one might be willing to offer.14 There, in the garden, it was never the custom among the ladies to speak of anything unpleasant, but solely of love, of its deity, of its power, and of Cupid’s mother Venus. There, they danced, they sang, and they indulged in only the most rich and opulent feasts. There, it was acceptable to be without a care in the world.

216 Comptes amoureux Quant est des fruictz dudict jardin pour certain je cuide que ne se trouveroit en tout le monde fruictage, fut bien es Jardins d’Alcinoüs qu’il n’y eust de l’espece encores s’en cuilloient de telz que l’on n’eust sceu finer ailleurs pour or ou argent qu’on sceut donner: là ne se souloit il jamais entre les Dames parler de propos fascheux, mais de l’amour, de sa divinité, de son pouvoir, et de sa mere Venus: là on dancoit, on chantoit, et faisoit on les riches et opulens festins seullement ; là estoit il loisible estre sans soucy au plus grand solas du monde. A costé de la fontaine sur l’herbe qui y estoit merveilleusement verde et druë entremeslee de diverses fleurs heureux repas et contentement des yeulx humains, avoit faicte dresser Madame Salphionne ung riche pavillon de soye: soubz lequel faisoit tant bon se reposer que merveille pour l’ardeur du soleil qui y augmentoit les fraicheurs. Or soubz iceluy pavillon s’assit la compaignie sans aulcunement garder l’ordre: mais ainsi que fortune octroya à chascun sa place et lieu. Si sembloit le Consistoire de Déesses et Dieux arrestez en quelque delicieuse forestz pour eulx sollacer à leur mode, [67r] ou les ocieux pasteurs avec les belles et gayes bergeres à l’ombre de la saulcoye devisans de leurs amourettes et delices ruraulx. Dont apres le silence impetré commenca ainsi à parler la gentille Cassandre, ayant tout premier assis sur le chef d’ung chascun ung beau chappeau de fleurs odoriferantes, tous pareilz du sien qu’elle avoit mis sur sa blonde teste. Il y en avoit deux lesquelz promptement resembloient de beaulté aul filz de Priam Roy de Troye lors qu’il lucta contre le fort Hector son frere, et tant bien advenoit le sien à la belle Cassandre, qu’elle resembloit une des Graces de Venus, ou plustost Venus mesme.

Tales and Trials of Love 217 Beside the fountain on the grass, which was miraculously green and lush and scattered with a variety of flowers, bountiful repast, and earthly delights, Madame Salphionne had set up a tent of fine silk, under which it was a wonder to relax, for it offered a cool respite from the burning sun. Although the group sat beneath this tent wherever they wished, Fortune saw to it that each had his or her appropriate place.15 It certainly seemed that the Council of Gods and Goddesses had endowed this delightful wood with the sole purpose of making them merry, [67r] the idle shepherds and the lovely and gay shepherdesses chatting about their love-tricks and pastoral delights beneath the shade trees. Once she had obtained silence, the gracious Cassandre began to speak, having first placed on everyone’s head a lovely crown of sweetsmelling flowers, all identical to the one that she had placed on her own head. Two of the men looked just as handsome as Paris, son of Troy’s King Priam, when he fought his valiant brother Hector, and it just so happened that the lovely Cassandre quite resembled one of Venus’s Graces, or rather Venus herself.16 [Here ends the fifth Tale of Love.]

218 Comptes amoureux COMPTE SIXIESME par Madame Cassandre, touchant les adventures du prœux et vaillant Chevalier Helias le blond.

[woodcut] Vrayement digne fut la punition du vilian jaloux Pyralius, et des aultres dont avez te[67v]nuz vos comptes, mes dames: et quant à moy je desirerois que ainsi, ou plus cruellement fussent puniz, et traictez la reste des jaloux de ce monde. Combien que j’espere que quelque jour ilz congoistront, et de plain gré confesseront qu’il n’est en leur puissance, qui sont villains et sans amytié, et qui le plus souvent par l’iniquite des parens sont joinctz par impareilz mariaiges, de garder leurs femmes si elle veullens et ont octroyé leurs entieres voluntez à amys vertueux, diligens, non eventez, non lourds, ou d’aultre maulvaise complexion ; si elles ont donné, dis je, leur entiere amour non à cest effaict qu’elles saoulent leurs luxurieux desirs, qu’elles ne parviennent à la jouyssance de leurs amoureuses joyes. Lesquelles si bien vous exposez, ne sont et consistent pas tant és plaisirs du corps qu’il faict des ames: la volunté desquelles qui pourroit arrester et empescher? Et certes bien folz et meschans sont ilz ceulx qui veullent asseurer leurs jalouses fantasies en la clousture des murs inaccessibles, des chambres secrettes et fermées: en la vigilance des cent yeulx d’Argus, en la fidelité soigneuses des Eunuches, et de ces vieilles soupsoneuses. Qu’il soit ainsi racompte l’aucteur des vrayes narrations d’amours, que apres que Helias le blond vaillant et amoureux chevallier eust occis le traistre larron Barigase, qui luy avoit desrobée son amye Fleurdelise, se mit en grand joye et soulas à cheminer vers le doulx pays de France monte sur son bon destrier nomme Batolde. Si advint qu’en chevau[68r]chant il s’embatit pres d’ung riche palais, au dessus de la porte duquel seoit une Damoiselle merveilleusement pleine de grande beaulte. Joinct qulle estoit richement vestuë d’une robbe de drapt d’or frizé. Icelle appercevant le chevallier venir de tout son pouvoir luy faisoit signe avec la main qu’il print ailleurs son chemin, et qu’il s’esloigna tant qu’il seroit possible du lieu. Or ne scay je pas si le Chevalier

Tales and Trials of Love 219 TALE SIX Told by Madame Cassandre, Pertaining to the Adventures of the Gallant and Valiant Knight Helias the Blond.

“That jealous villain Pyralius received a truly just punishment, as did the others [67v] whom you discussed in your tales, my ladies.1 And if it were up to me, I would wish for the rest of the jealous men of this world to be punished in such a manner, or even more cruelly treated. I feel so strongly about this that I hope that someday all such men (that is those who are villainous, devoid of good will and so often enter into a mismatched marriage due to the iniquity of the bride’s parents) will recognize and freely confess that it is not within one’s moral authority (although it may well be within legal authority) to oblige one’s wife to remain with her husband if she desires another, and if she has already pledged herself to a virtuous, diligent, unassuming man (one who is not overbearing or possessing any other fault). On the condition, may I add, that the wife has given her whole heart, not so that she might revel in her lusty desires, but rather so that she might achieve true love. “You have all so thoroughly discussed these joys (which are found not so much in sensual pleasures as in matters of the heart) that I must ask: how could one possibly refuse or impede consent to such a thing? “And certainly, quite foolish and callous is he who wishes to impose his jealous fantasies on his wife by enclosing her within inaccessible walls, hidden away or closed up in rooms under the vigilance of Argus’s hundred eyes and under the faithful care of eunuchs and old, suspicious hags.2 I will now tell you how the author of the True Tales of Love recounts it.”3 After Helias the Blond, a valiant and love-struck knight, had killed the treacherous Barigase (who had stolen his beloved Fleurdelise from him), he felt great joy and mirth in returning to the sweet land of France, mounted on his fine steed named Batolde. And so it happened that while riding, [68r] he suddenly came upon a sumptuous palace, above the gate of which was seated a lady, of a stunningly great beauty, coupled with the fact that she was richly dressed in a gown of ruffled, golden cloth.

220 Comptes amoureux entendit la Damoiselle, si est ce qu’il ne cessa jusques à ce qu’il se trouva dedans. Dont entré qu’il fut va appercevoir de premiere entrée une large et spacieuse Court, à l’entour de laquelle estoient galleries mignonement depainctes et historiées.

Comment Helias, entré en la Court du Palais, y trouva ung horrible Gean, lequel il occit. Or avoit ladicte Court en largeur et longueur environ cinq cens pas: et là quasi au millieu se tenoit ung Gean le plus horrible qu’on vit jamais: ne le grant Tipheo qui fut par Juppiter de Crete vaincu, n’estoit point si terrible. Il sembloit menacer le Ciel et la terre à veoir ses espouventables facons: combien qu’il n’eust aulcune espee ou massuë, ne cuyrasse au doz, seullement pour toute deffense il tenoit ung treslong et gros serpent par la queuë. Le Chevallier Helias fut quelque peu esbahy de tant estrange adventure. Au fort voiant [68v] qu’il estoit prins, et que le salut gisoit au taillant de son espee se rasseura au mieulx qu’il peult: il jecta sa veuë par tout, et apperceut par une aultre porte yssant de ladicte court, la verdure d’ung jardin, et là ung chevallier monté et armé comme pour deffendre ou assaillir: et non guieres loing ung sepulchre: lequel gardoit le Chevallier armé. Or le Gean estoit en continuelle peine et travail à cause du serpent qu’il tenoit ainsi par la queuë: si le contornoit tant impetueusement à l’entour de la teste que le Serpent, combien qu’il s’esforca de ce faire, ne luy pouvoit nuyre. Ce pendant que le Gean contornoit le serpent, Helais est venu à la porte, et apperceu de cest horrible monstre, luy soufflant de maltalent et courroux, s’en vint courant au Chevallier pour le frapper parmy le corps. Or se cœuvre le ciel à Helias, mes dames, que cestuy est bien le plus merveilleux et estrange enchantement de quoy on ait jamais ouy parler. Le Gean va ruer ung coup de son serpent et attaignit Helias en travers, si sentit tant desmesuree douleur, qu’en son vivant n’en eust de telle. Car ce dragon estoit fort long, gros, et dur. Ce neantmoins il print cœur, et dit qu’il s’en vengeroit, il sacca l’espée, et en donna tel coup au Gean

Tales and Trials of Love 221 Seeing the knight approaching, she waved with all her might so that he would take another path and distance himself as much as possible from those parts. I know not if the knight heard the lady, but I do know that he did not stop until he found himself inside the palace. Once he had entered, he would first take in a large and spacious courtyard, surrounded by delightfully painted galleries depicting diverse stories. How Helias, Once He Had Entered the Palace Courtyard, Found a Horrible Giant, Which He Killed. Now, the courtyard was about five hundred paces in both length and breadth, and right in the center there was the most horrible giant one has ever seen—not even the great Typhon, whom Jupiter of Crete defeated, was quite as atrocious.4 His gests and demeanor were so loathsome that even the heavens and the Earth seemed to shrink back in fear, and he relied on nothing but the most simple of arms. He depended on neither sword, nor club, nor breastplate; his only means of defense was to wield a very lengthy, hefty snake by its tail. The knight Helias was slightly taken aback by such a strange sight. Nevertheless, seeing [68v] that he was cornered and that salvation resided at the tip of his sword, he reassured himself as best he could. He looked all around and saw another exit from the courtyard, through which he caught a glimpse of a verdant garden. There, he saw a knight on horseback, armed for either defense or combat, and not far beyond him there was a sepulcher, which the armed knight was guarding. Now, it was a difficult task to maintain control of the snake in his grasp; indeed, the giant was struggling and laboring considerably. Nonetheless, he was able to swing the snake so furiously above his head that it was unable to harm him, regardless of how much it lashed about. While the giant was flailing the snake around, Helias approached the door, and the horrible monster caught sight of him. Thus enraged, he barreled toward the knight, panting hostilely, and aiming to ram into him. And then, my ladies, the most awe-inspiring, bizarre enchantment imaginable occurred: the sky darkened over Helias. Then, the giant reared back and hurled his snake, attacking Helias from behind. The impact of that dragon-like creature caused him the most jolting pain that he had ever felt in his life. It was, after all, a huge, heavy, and treacherous snake.

222 Comptes amoureux sus l’espaule qu’il luy fit une playe profonde de deux piedz ou peu moins. Le Gean sentoit grande angoisse, et braioit comme ung diable deschainé: toutesfois pour se venger va derechef haulser le serpent, et en donna tel coup au chevallier sur la teste, qu’il le jecta jus du cheval comme mort, et re[69r]doublant son coup attaingnit Batolde le bon destrier, et avec grand tempeste l’estend sur les carreaux comme il avoit faict le Chevallier. La pauvre Damoiselle Fleurdelise à celle fois devint presque sans ame et sentiment: et se destordant et arrachant ses blondz cheveux, pleuroit et se lamentoit en telle facon, que les statues marbrines qui en la court sus gros pilliers estoient, s’en attendrirent et prindrent pitié d’elle. A chef de piece revint à soy Helias, et cuydant se venger de la honte receuë, va vers le Gean qui ne cessoit de brandir son serpent de manier que s’approchant le Chevallier en fut derechef mis par terre: piteuse chose estoit le contempler de la Damoiselle Fleurdelise: sa contenance apres long pleurer esoit comme ung qui condemné à mourir veoit l’execution de ses complices: elle ne meust ne pied ne jambe: de rigueur presque elle enroidit, et prent la forme de celles statues transformées en l’aspect chef de Gorgonne. Helias recevant le desmesuré coup aussi frappa d’estoc le Gean, et le perca de part en part, dont cheurent tous deux quasi en mesme instant. Mais tout soubdain (chose stupende) fut muë le Serpent en ung Gean, tel qu’estoit le premier: et le Gean mort se mua en Serpent, comme estoit l’aultre: et ainsi qu’il estoit par terre estendu, fut prins du Gean par la queuë, et s’approchant de Helias taiche de le mettre à mort: mais le Chevallier estoit si preux et plain de tant grand couraige, qu’il l’a blessé en troys et quattre pars du corps: et nonobstant tout ce, ne [69v] cessoit la mauldite creature d’assaillir le Chevalier: combien qu’en fin luy bailla tel coup Helias, qu’il le fendit jusques au nombril. Ainsi mourut et devint Serpent, et le Serpent fut mué encores en Gean comme auparavant avoit esté, dont fut entre eulx l’assault renouvellé plus que oncques, et encores ung coup le Gean occit: Mais comme au premier devint le Gean Serpent, et le Serpent gean: voire ainsi advint jusques à la sixiesme fois, si croissoit le debat de plus fort, tant que le Chevallier lassé, et voiant qu’il n’y avoit point de fin quelque peine qui meit à la deffense, se reputa pour mort sans aulcun remede. Neantmoins comme preux et vaillant Chevallier qu’il estoit n’en faisoit semblant totallement: mais d’ung cœur asseuré va enfin ruer

Tales and Trials of Love 223 Nevertheless, he mustered up his courage and vowed to avenge himself. He thrust his sword and struck the giant’s shoulder so hard that he made a deep wound, nearly two feet in length. The giant was in considerable agony and shrieked like a demon unleashed, but he quickly fought back, wielding his snake yet again and striking the knight’s head with such force that he flung him down from his horse, and the knight’s body appeared lifeless. The giant [69r] then redoubled his attack, aiming at the great steed Batolde and, with the ferocity of a great whirlwind, splayed him out over the cobblestones just as he had done the knight. On witnessing this, the poor Lady Fleurdelise was nearly speechless and numb. She was thrashing about and pulling out her hair, crying and grieving to such an extent that the marble statues, mounted on stout pillars in the courtyard, were aroused with compassion and took pity on her. Finally, Helias came to and, determining to avenge himself of the shame of defeat, advanced toward the giant (who was still wielding his snake), and Helias again was struck down to the ground. Lady Fleurdelise was a pitiful sight indeed. She had cried at such length that one would have taken her for a prisoner condemned to death and made to witness the execution of her accomplices. She moved not a muscle and her body grew almost completely stiff, just as one of those statues transformed on seeing the Gorgon’s head. The giant struck Helias with enormous force, and he in turn stabbed the giant, piercing him from one side to the other so that the severed halves collapsed to the ground at nearly the same time. But all of a sudden (this was an astonishing thing!), the snake transformed into a giant, identical to the first one, and the dead giant transformed into a snake, also identical to the other one, and while it was lying on the ground, the giant picked it up by the tail and approached Helias with the intent to kill. But, the knight was so valiant and courageous that he inflicted wounds on numerous parts of the giant’s body, and despite all of that, [69v] the cursed creature would not relent. Finally, it reached the point that Helias struck him with such force that he split him right through to the navel, ending the giant’s life. But, the giant then transformed into a snake, and the snake transformed again into a giant, just as it had done before, and between the two they redoubled their assault, becoming even fiercer than before. And once again, the giant died, but just as did the first one, he became a snake and the snake, a giant. Six times this happened, and the intensity of the battle continued to increase so that the knight,

224 Comptes amoureux ung coup, cuydant avaler la teste au Gean, si escheut qu’il rencontra le Serpent par le nombril, et le meit en deux pieces, parquoy à celle heure perdit cœur le Gean, et gettée la reste dudict Serpent, se print tresfort à fouyr vers le sepulchre criant et urlant treshorriblement, et menant si estrange tempeste, que cent coups de double canons n’eussent faict tel bruyt. Et de Stentor, de celluy que recite Homere en son Illiade avoir heu aultant de voix que cinquante aultres criant ensemble, les urlemens eussent esté tresfoibles et remys: aupres de l’urler de celle peste, et monstre d’homme. Or les suyvoit de toute sa force le preux Helias, si luy bailla en fuyant tel coup qu’il luy fendit la teste jusques à la ceincture, dont luy convint là [70r] rendre l’ame meslée avec le rouge sang qui yssoit de son corps en telle effusion, que le prochain fleuve fluant en l’ocean par soixante lieux de loing, en fut mué en semblable couleur: comme apres la bataille des Grecs et des Troyens le feuve Scamander estoit enrougi du sang des miserables occis. Or fut force au Gean de mourir parce qu’il estoit separé de son compaignon le Serpent, qui avoit esté mis en deux pieces, dont ne peult il plus resusciter en vie comme auparavant.

Comment le Chevallier du sepulchre apres la desconfiture de son Gean vint assaillir le preux Helias. Or n’esoit à peine cheu mort le gean, quand s’en courut contre Helias cest aultre Chevalier que j’ay dit cy dessus qui gardoit le sepulchre: en tel courroux et ire qu’Achilles s’en vint à l’encontre du preux Hector pour venger la mort de son cher amy Patoclus. Là recommenca le debat merveilleux entre eulx: aufort en avoit du meilleur le preux Helias, lequel (pour le faire court) le tua tout roide mort aupres de son Gean. La belle Fleurdelise appercevant la noise estre terminée, et que son chier amy oultre tout espoir humain estoit rechappé en vie, sembloit celle qui fut tirée nouvellement d’une prison obscure, et mise en pleine liberté: la joye d’elle estoit incomprehensible, et peu s’en faillit

Tales and Trials of Love 225 wearied and seeing no end in sight, despite the pains to which he went to defend himself, thought surely that he was a dead man. Nevertheless, being the gallant and valiant knight that he was, he did not completely let on to this. He mustered up his courage and dealt one final blow, intending to decapitate the giant, but he happened to strike the snake in the navel and sever it into two pieces. Finally, the giant gave in to defeat, and he threw aside the snake’s remains. He then began to flee toward the sepulcher with all his might, screaming and howling quite horribly and throwing such an impressive tantrum that continuous firing of a double-barreled cannon would scarcely rival the commotion. And Stentor’s screams (who, according to Homer’s Iliad, had a voice as loud as fifty men screaming simultaneously) would have paled in comparison to the cry of this beastly monster of a man.5 Now, the gallant Helias followed him with all his might, and dealt such a blow to the fleeing giant that he split him clear through from his head to his waist. He then removed [70r] his blade, now stained with the red blood that was draining from his body so profusely that it tinged a nearby river, and that blood-red current continued to flow sixty leagues, right into the ocean (just as after the battle of the Greeks and Trojans when the Scamander River was reddened by the blood of the miserable dead). And so the giant endeavored to die because he was separated from his companion the snake, which had been severed in two, a wound from which it could not recover and resuscitate as it had once done. How the Knight of the Sepulcher, after the Defeat of His Giant, Came to Assault the Gallant Helias. Now, the giant had only just been killed when this other knight (whom I said earlier was guarding the sepulcher) rushed toward Helias, full of such furious rage that one could have taken him for Achilles when he went up against the gallant Hector in order to avenge the death of his dear friend Patroclus.6 An incredible battle began between them right then and there. Nevertheless, Helias was undaunted, and since he had the upper hand he (to make a long story short) struck the knight down dead so that he lay alongside his giant. The lovely Fleurdelise, realizing that the clamor was ended and that her dear beloved was miraculously still alive, seemed as one who had only just been rescued from a dark

226 Comptes amoureux qu’elle ne mourut, ainsi que la mere voiant [70v] son filz revenu lequel longtemps avoit reputé pour mort, reprenant ses forces tenoit ses mains joictes au ciel, louit ses Dieux de la victoire de son amy: puis le vint accoller tresamoureusement, luy liant et lavant ses playes receues. Mais en cest instant la porte par ou ilz estoient entrez en ce palais s’estoit disparuë, et n’estoit posssible de sortir de là quelque peine qu’ilz y meissent. Dont demeurent ilz là estonnez, et ne scavoient que devenir, si sembloient loups et regnardz privez en une fosse creuse et proffonde par l’astuce du laboureur: seulle celle esperance les destenoit, que par la damoiselle leur seroit monstrée la fin de celle adventure. Parquoy attendans secours, ocieusement regardoient les histoires painctes au long des quatre Galleries à or et asur fort richement.

Description du Palais des adventures de Helias le blond. [woodcut] Or d’ailleurs estoit le Palais basty et maconné de riche pierrerie avec belles histoires y en-[71r]taillées. Car premierement estoient les fenestres de cristal, les portaulx et les huys d’ung or fin d’arabie: les murailles et les creneaux de coral vermeil comme sang. Et en la premiere gallerie estoient richement depeinct les fais et gestes du magnanime Cyrus Roy de Perse en quatre endroitz moult bien distincts. En premier front se voioit comment le dit Cyrus eschapast de mort, laquelle il avoit esté condemné avant sa naissance par Astrages, lequel en se faisant s’estoit persuadé de pouvoir eviter sa fatale et cruelle destinée: apres ce comment il estoit nourry dedans les boys avecques le pasteurs Royaulx ou il creust, et admenda tant en beaulte, grandeur, force de corps, et magnanimite de couraige, que chascun en esperoit une merveilleuse yssuë. Tous les pasteurs le craignoient et avoient en reverence: et desja ses compaignons enfans des pasteurs l’avoient faict et constitué en leurs pastoralles emprinses leur Roy et Capitaine, le faisant seoir en chayre Royalle. Astrages, qui n’estoit encores assez asseuré que l’enfant son ennemy fut mort, adverty ne scay comment de telz facons de faire entre les pasteurs, dolent et soubsonneux de ce qu’en estoit, enfin sceut que Cyrus n’estoit point mort, dont le commanda

Tales and Trials of Love 227 prison and given full freedom. Her joy was immeasurable, and she quite nearly died of it, just as might a mother seeing [70v] her son return, who had long been believed dead. Mustering up her strength, she held her clasped hands up to the heavens and praised her gods for her beloved’s victory. Then, she went to embrace him most lovingly, stitching up and cleaning his battle wounds. But at that moment, the door through which they had entered the palace disappeared, and it was impossible to escape, regardless of how hard they tried. They were completely taken aback and, as if wolves or foxes trapped in a deep, dark hole by a cunning farmer, knew not what would become of them. The only hope that sustained them was that the lady would show them an escape from this adventure. As they waited for help, they leisurely contemplated the stories so richly painted in gold and azure along the four galleries. Description of the Palace Where Helias the Blond’s Adventures Took Place. It just so happened that the palace was constructed of rich stone engraved with beautiful murals. [71r] To begin, the windows were made of crystal, the doors and thresholds of a fine Arabian gold, the walls and battlements of a blood-red coral. And in the first gallery, the deeds and gests of the great King Cyrus of Persia were richly depicted in four distinct segments. In the forefront one could see how Cyrus escaped a near death, for Astyages had ordered his killing before his birth in an attempt to divert his own ill-fated and cruel destiny. After this, one could see how Cyrus was raised in the woods by the royal shepherds, where he grew to adulthood and developed such beauty, greatness, strength of body, and magnanimity of heart that everyone had high hopes for him. All of the shepherds both feared him and held him in reverence, and his friends (the children of the shepherds) already had crowned him King. As Commander-in-Chief of their pastoral play-land, he presided over his subjects from a royal throne. Astyages (who was not yet quite reassured that the child of his enemy was dead) was warned (I know not how or in what manner) by the shepherds. Grieving and suspicious about the content of the warning, he finally found out that Cyrus was not dead at all. Thus, he ordered that he be brought to his court where, concealing his hatred, he gave him a very grand and joyful welcome and a few days later, named him Captain

228 Comptes amoureux admener en sa Court: ou dissimulant sa hayne luy fit tresgrand et joyeulx acccueil, et peu de jours apres l’establit Capitaine general de son armee contre les Medois. Et celle expedition de Medie estoit depeincte de pareille estophe: et y voioit on toutes les proues-[71v]ses dudict Cyrus: pareillement comment il subjugoit à force d’armes la Cyrie, et aggrandissoit journellement son royaulme de Perse. Apres cela suyvoit la grande contention qu’il eust contre Cresus roy de Lidie. Mais au bout de ladicte gallerie on pouvoit veoir comment ledit Cyrus passa en Scythie, en laquelle expedition, il fut si malheureux qu’il perdit toute son yvresse armée, et la vie propre. Et c’est tout tant qu’estoit peinct en la premiere gallerie. En la seconde estoit pourtricte toute l’histoire d’Alexandre le grand: et la conqueste qu’il fit de Darius, et de son pays de Perse tout baignant en feu et sang des occis, non sans la grande joye des Macedons gens d’armes traversans à force les pays estranges des Indes et d’ailleurs. En la troysiesme gallerie confligeoient les deux armee de Pompée et Cæsar aux champs Thessaliens: auquel conflict se retrouvoit desconfit le malhereux Pompée, et apres occis par le trahitre Egiptien vers qui il s’estoit refuit, non sans les lhermes et desplaisir dudit Cæsar. En la quatriesme gallerie faisoient faicts d’armes ceulx, des gestes desquelz on a remplis les livres de songes: Lancelot, Tristant, Meliadus, et plusieurs aultres Chevalliers de la table ronde, et là estoient és grans festins et assemblées la Royne Genievre, la blonde Iseul, la belle Royne D’orcanye mere de mon Seigneur Gauvain. Le pavement desdictes galleries estoient faictz de pierres precieuses bien mises en ordre, et les grandes colonnes de marbres, de Porfires, d’hyaicnthes, [72r] de rubis, et dyamans. Les voultes figurées en manière de ciel disposé maintenant comme pour venter, maintenant comme pour pleuvoir, ou faire beau temps ou comme pour envoyer ca bas ses nocturnes tenebres, ou le jour, tellement qu’il estoit advis au chevallier Helias qu’il estoit cheu en ung aultre monde.

Tales and Trials of Love 229 General of his army against the Medes. And this expedition to Media was also well depicted, and one could view illustrations of all of Cyrus’s prowess [71v] for battle: how he subjugated Syria with his armed forces and how his realm of Persia grew daily. After this followed the great battle he had against King Croesus of Lydia. But at the end of the gallery, one could see how Cyrus went into Scythia. During this expedition, he was so unlucky that he lost all of the glory gained on the battlefield, as well as his own life. And that is everything just as it was pictured in the first gallery.7 In the second gallery, the entire history of Alexander the Great was portrayed: the conquest he made against Darius and the story of his land of Persia, which was all bathed in fire and the blood of its dead (this elicited the great joy of the Macedonians, an armed people who conquered the strange lands of the Indies and other regions).8 In the third gallery, the two armies of Pompey and Caesar battled in the fields of Thessaly, during which the ill-fated Pompey found himself defeated and afterward, killed by the treacherous Egyptian to whom he had fled (but not without the tears and displeasure of the aforementioned Caesar).9 The fourth gallery displayed the chivalric feats of those men whose deeds provide the matter of fantastical books: Lancelot, Tristan, Meliador, and several other Knights of the Round Table.10 And there also were assembled together, amid grand festivities, Queen Guinevere, Isolde the Blonde, and the beautiful Queen of Orkney, Sir Gawain’s mother.11 These galleries were paved with carefully placed, precious stones, and the great columns were made of marble, porphyry, hyacinth [72r], rubies, and diamonds. The vaults, fashioned to resemble the sky, seemed to produce wind, then rain, then clear skies, as if they had the power to cast both the night’s shadows and the light of day on the beholder, an effect that made the knight Helias feel as though he had fallen into another world.

230 Comptes amoureux Comment du sepulchre sortit ung horrible Serpent, lequel par ung baiser que luy feit Helias, fut mué en une belle Damoiselle. Ainsi que je vous ay dit, s’amusoient le Chevallier et la Damoiselle son amye à contempler la peincture. Et voicy venir vers eulx celle Damoiselle qui au paravant leur avoit faict signe de n’entrer point au Palais. Venué a eulx: «Chevallier,» dit elle, «pourquoy consumes tu le temps en vain à regarder ceste peincture: et ne penses à choses qui de plus pres t’attouchent? Ce n’est riens faict: ou il te fault icy perir de malle faim encloz en ce laberinthe, ou il te fault sans demeure ouvrir celle tumbe, et icelle ouverte, si jamais tu eus hardy couraige d’achever haultes entreprinses, besoing est de l’avoir à ceste heure, si d’aventure toy et nous ne veulx demeurer à jamais perduz. Je te dy Chevallier qu’il te conviendra baiser en la bouche ce que ystra hors de celluy sepulchre. «Comment,» dit le Chevallier, «ne tient il qu’à cella que ne soyons hors d’icy? [72v] Je ne pense point qu’il y ait en enfer Diable si terrible, à qui je ne pense bien approcher le visaige. De tout ce ne vous souciez Damoiselle, plus tost pour l’amour de vous je baiseray ceste chose dix fois, que je ne vous delivre de ceste prison. Ainsi disant Helias marchea avant, et saisissant une grande boucle d’or estant droit sur le meillieu du marbre, va apercevoir lettres gravées, lesquelles disoient. Force, tresor, beaulté qui si peu dure, Prouesse ou sens ne te scauroient garder, Que rencontré n’aies malle adventure, Si au tumbeau tu te viens hasarder. Apres que Helias eust leu l’epitaphe de la tumbe merveilleuse, s’arresta tout court espoventé comme celluy qui en allant sa voye entreveoit à ses piedz une Couleuvre sifflant et pleine de menaces. Ce neantmoins reprenant cœur courageusement s’efforcoit de soubslever la pierre: dont ouverte que fut la sepulture, luy voicy apparoir ung horrible Serpent qui feit telle peur au Chevallier qu’il se meist à fouyr, non aultrement que le peuple de Troye feit lors que Laocoon et ses enfans feurent devorez par deux Dragons yssus de la prochaine mer: peu s’en faillit que le Chevallier ne mourusse de peur: car le Serpent siffloit

Tales and Trials of Love 231 How a Horrible Serpent Came out of the Sepulcher and How with a Single Kiss, Helias Transformed Her into a Lovely Lady. Just as I told you, the knight and his beloved lady were greatly entertained as they contemplated the paintings. And then they saw approach the lady who had warned them previously not to dare to enter the palace. When she reached them, she said: “Knight, why do you spend time vainly looking at this painting, and why do you not think about things that concern you more imminently? You are wasting your time. Either you will perish of hunger trapped here in this labyrinth, or you must open this tomb without delay. If ever you possess the courage to carry out such an important task, you certainly need it at this time, unless we all wish to remain lost forever. I command you, knight, to kiss on the lips whatever comes out of this sepulcher.” “I beg your pardon,” said the knight, “is this all that is necessary in order that we get out of here? [72v] I doubt that there is a devil in Hell so terrible that I would fear to approach its face. Do not worry about this, lady; for your sake I would kiss this thing ten times if that is what is required to deliver you from this prison.” Having said this, Helias marched forward and, grasping a large golden handle right in the middle of the marble slab, saw an engraving, which read: Not strength, or wealth, or beauty—their time so slight— Nor sense, nor power, shall you for aid presume: Encounter here an evil, vicious plight If you, by chance, should stumble on this tomb. On reading the epitaph on the mysterious tomb, Helias stopped short, as stunned as if he had seen a snake hissing at his feet, ready to strike. Nevertheless, he found his courage and tried with all his might to lift the stone. Once the sepulcher was opened, a horrible snake emerged that so frightened the knight that he began to flee, just as the Trojan people did when Laocoön and his children were devoured by two dragonlike serpents that had come out of the neighboring sea.12 The snake was hissing more frightfully than the ocean’s waves during a tempest [73r],13 terrifying the knight to the brink of death. Its eyes were large

232 Comptes amoureux plus effraiement, que ne font les undes de la mer tempe[73r]stées, il avoit les yeulx gros et ardens comme feu, d’horrible et espouventable aspect, les dens luy sortoient de la gueule plus de deux piedz. Si venoit apres le Chevallier, lequel pour toute deffense mect la main à l’espée, et ja la vouloit frapper quand la dame luy escria effraiement: «Gardes que tu fais, Chevallier: ne la touches point, que tu nous feras tous perir et abismer avec ce Palais: La deffense n’y sert de riens, il la te convient baiser en la bouche, ou que tu estimes desja n’estre plus entre les vivans: approche, te dy je, ta bouche à la sienne: mourir aultrement te fauldra en ce lieu. «Comment ne veoy tu,» dict le Chevallier, «en quelle facon elle grince les dens, et tu veulx que e la baise ayant encores elle le regard si maling, que seulement à la veoir quasi j’en ys hors de mon sens?» «Mais» respond la dame, «couard chevallier, elle t’enseigne comme tu la doibs baiser. Je te dys pour certain que plusieurs aultres par couardye sont demeurez perduz et ensepveliz en celle tumbe: aussi seras tu si tu ne prens mon conseil.» Adonc le Chevallier print cœur par l’enhortement de la damoiselle, et marcha en avant pour baiser cest tant horrible serpent, mais sur le poinct tant luy sembla la chose dangereuse, qu’il se tira arriere non trop asseuré: il estoit pasle en sa face comme buys. Si disoit: «bien que je suis certain que ung jour me conviendra mourir, j’ayme plus cher qu’il soit une aultres foys que maintenant: si je puis ja ne m’en seray je l’occasion. Ainsi fusse je certain d’avoir tous mes desirs, comme je suis seur que je seray hap[73v]pé de ses gryphes, si tost ne me seray je cliné vers elle. Que scay je si celle damoiselle se veult venger en ce poinct de son mary que je luy ay tué naguieres? Sur aultre en vienne le peril: je me garderay si je puis. Ce disant se tire plus loing deliberé de ne s’en plus approcher de si pres. Quoy voyant la damoiselle se lamentoit trop amerement et s’esgratinoit la face par cruelle manière: si disoit, «Ahi Chevallier failly, quelle vilté ta saisy maintenant le cœur? tu es bien prochain de ta ruyne. Las je l’advise de son infortune et malheur, et il ne me veult croire, ainsi faict quiconques n’a point de foy.»

Tales and Trials of Love 233 and fiery and cast a horrible and ghastly expression; its teeth protruded more than two feet from its mouth. The snake came after the knight, and his only defense was the sword in his hand. He was just about to strike the snake when the lady cried out horrified: “Watch what you do, knight. Do not harm it or we will perish along with this palace. It is not worth the effort to defend yourself. All you must do is kiss it on the lips, unless you wish no longer to be counted among the living. Place your lips on the snake’s mouth, or else you must die right here.” “Do you not see,” said the knight, “how it bares its fangs, and you want me to kiss it while it looks at me so maliciously that the sheer sight of it sends chills down my spine?” “But,” replied the lady, “cowardly knight, it is showing you how you must kiss it. I assure you that several others were lost here forever, interred in this tomb, eternal victims of their cowardice. And so, too, will you be if you do not heed my advice.” At that, the knight took heart in the lady’s encouragement and proceeded forward in order to kiss this rather horrible snake, but just as he was about to do it, the prospect seemed so dangerous to him that he withdrew in uncertainty. His face was ashen. Then he said, “Although I know that I must die one day, I prefer that it not be today. And if I may, I will not give myself the opportunity to die until I am certain to have achieved all my heart’s desires, for I am sure that I will be snatched up [73v] in the snake’s grasp if I dare to get near it. For all I know, this lady may be trying to avenge the death of her husband, whom I just killed. I leave it to another to tempt the fates; I will try to protect myself.” Saying this, he withdrew, determined not to get any nearer. Seeing this, the lady bitterly wailed and brutally tore at her face, saying: “Oh, knight, you are mistaken. What maliciousness has seized your heart? You are quite close to your demise. Alas, I advise him of his misfortune and adversity, and he does not wish to believe me; these are the actions of one lacking in faith.”

234 Comptes amoureux Comment Helias esmeu des parolles de la Damoiselle baisa legerement le Serpent. Helias fut esmeu de telles parolles, et s’evergoigna de sa vaine pœur, dont derechef s’avanca vers le serpent, neantmoins tremblant comme au premier, car l’ung penser l’enhortoit à l’entreprise achever, l’aultre luy faisoit perdre le cœur: enfin entre l’asseurance et la crainte il s’abbaissa, et legerement baisa le serpent qu’il trouva froid comme glace. Adoncques peu à peu se transmuoit ledit serpent en une belle Damoiselle. Ceste estoit Phebosille la Faé: qui avoit edifié le Palais, le jardin, et la tumbe à la requeste du Chevallier occis. Doncques estant ainsi tournée en sa forme premiere, demeuroit tou[74r]te debout en la presence du chevallier, vestuë d’une cotte de damas blanc comme neige: et du long de ses espaules aval jusques sus les genoux luy dependoient ses aureins cheveux espars: apres ce, devisoit avec une tant gentille mode avec le chavellier, qu’il en devenoit tout amoureux: et de faict n’eust esté qu’il avoit s’amye la brune Fleurdelise presente, ne fut jamais desparty de là. Laquelle chose aussi grevoit par trop à la faé Phebosile, mais congnoissant qu’il n’y avoit ordre, le va inviter à requerir tel don qu’il vouldroit, salaire, et recompense de ses labeurs. «Chevallier,» dit elle, «vos peines employées à la delivrance de ceste damoiselle meritent d’en estre recompensées. Une chose seroit bien en ma puissance vous donner: laquelle veritablement j’estime la plus precieuse de mes tresors, pourtant que la Damoiselle Fleurdelise vostre amye n’en seroit contente, je ne vous ose aulcunement la presenter: c’est l’amytie et la jouyssance de la divine et celeste personne de la prisoniere damoiselle que voiez icy presente: pource advisez, s’il vous plaist d’avoir vos armeures et vostre cheval faez, affin que desormais puissiez achever avec plus grande hardiesse et seuresté les haultes entreprinses, mais aussi par courtoisie vous me promettrez d’accepter la conduicte de la damoiselle delivrée, qui est nommée Daurine, jusques en la Surie vers son père. Le dolent n’a aultre enfant qu’elle, et si ne scait si elle est morte ou vivante. Il est grand Barbosor de la Cité de Lise, riche d’estat, ayant grande puissance entre [74v] ses voisins. Helias ouyant ainsi parler Phebosille voluntiers accepta d’avoir son destrier et son harnois faé, promit aussi de conduire la belle damoiselle Daurine jusques à la Cite de Lise vers le Roy son père.

Tales and Trials of Love 235 How Helias, Moved by the Lady’s Words, Gently Kissed the Serpent. These words moved Helias, and his needless fear embarrassed him. Thus, he advanced toward the serpent, nevertheless trembling as he had before, for a part of him urged him to carry out the task, and the other part of him made him lose his courage. Finally, feeling both confidence and fear, he lowered himself and gently kissed the snake, which was as cold as ice. And then, little by little, the said snake transformed into a beautiful lady. Before him was Phebosille the Fairy, who had fortified the palace, the garden, and the tomb at the request of the defunct knight. Thus transformed into her original form, she was now standing [74r] upright in the presence of the knight, clothed in a damask frock as white as snow, and her golden hair flowed sparsely over her shoulders down to her knees. Then, she spoke kindly with the knight, and he was quite smitten with her. In fact, he might have fallen in love and never left that place if his beloved brunette Fleurdelise had not been present. This also aggrieved Phebosille, but aware that such feelings were futile, she invited him to request any gift, fee, or recompense for his labors that he might wish. “Knight,” she said, “the great pains that you took to deliver this lady deserve to be rewarded. There is one thing that is within my power to give you, which I truly deem to be the most precious of my treasures. However, your beloved Lady Fleurdelise may not be pleased by that, so I dare not present it to you. I refer to the love and sensual delight of the divine and celestial person of the woman-prisoner whom you see here before you. Be advised that if you wish it, you may have your armor and your horse enchanted so that you may accomplish your noble feats with greater boldness and precision, if you will be so kind as to see to the safe conduct of the rescued lady, whose name is Daurine, to her father in Syria. The poor man has no other daughter besides her, and he does not know whether she is dead or alive. He is the great Barbasor of the city of Liza, rich in land and greatly powerful [74v] among his neighbors. Helias, hearing Phebosille speak these words, accepted to have his steed and harness enchanted and also promised to take the lovely Lady Daurine to her father in the city of Liza.

236 Comptes amoureux Comment le preux Helias partist du Palais aavec son amye Fleurdelise pour conduire la belle Daurine jusques à la cité de Lise, ou estoit le Roy son père. Or estoit adoncques ouverte la porte du palais et à travers icelle estoit encores estendu Batolde le bon cheval de Helias, et ne se pouvoit relever pour l’horrible et mortel coup qu’il avoit receu du Gean, et vrayement fust il bien mort en la place, si la belle dame Phebosille ne l’eust promptement aydé et secouru avec jus d’herbes et certaines eaux vertueuses. Helias ayant recouvert son bon destrier, et que tout son harnois fut faé, print congé de la Dame, et se mit en chemin en la compaignie de sa chere amye, laquelle chevauchoit à costé dextre, et la damoiselle Daurine à senestre moult richement montées, et accompaignées de deux lacquais. Le chevalier pour aulcuns pensemens qui luy voltigeoient en la fantasie chevauchoit taisible, parquoy la gentile Daurine va prendre la parolle, et [75r] dit. «A quoy pensez vous tant sire chevallier? Je vois bien qu’il me convient estre celle orendroit qui face trouver le chemin plus brief, et le logis plus pres, par vous faire quelque beau et plaisant compte: et ce mesmement je feray plus voluntiers, que je desire vous racompter par quelle desaventure je fus conduicte en ce palais ou j’ay esté longuement prisoniere. Certaine suis que prendrez plaisir et joyeulx orrez comment à ung jaloux riens ne luy prouffitent ses souspecons, et asseurances: et direz, qu’il est bien employé si à telles gens tous malheurs adviennent, comme certes ilz en sont dignes, et le meritent. Daurine en chemin racompte à Helias de ses Amours, et comment elle fut oultre son gré mariée à ung vieillart jaloux. Le Roy Doliston mon père eust deux filles, dont la premiere estant encores petite luy fut ravie par ung larron au prochain rivaige de la Cité de Lise: or desja estoit elle promise en mariage au filz du Roy D’armenie la pauvrette, si n’en fut nouvelles depuis, combien que assez elle fut cherchée (sur ce, mes dames, voulut Fleurdelise interrompre le propos de la damoiselle Daurine, et luy demandoit ja le nom de la mere de ses deux filles, mais Helias qui avoit grand desir d’ouyr la fin, luy pria [75v] de se taire. «M’amye,»dict il, «laissez la achever je vous

Tales and Trials of Love 237 How the Gallant Helias Left the Palace with His Beloved Fleurdelise in Order to Take the Lovely Daurine to the City of Liza, Where Her Father the King Lived. Meanwhile, Helias’s great steed Batolde was still lying across the entrance to the palace, for the gate was now open. The giant had struck him so furiously and lethally that he could not get up, and the wound surely would have killed him had the lovely Lady Phebosille not promptly come to his aid, reviving him with the juice of herbs and various healing waters. Once Helias had recovered his great steed, and Phebosille had cast a spell over his armor, he took leave of the lady and set off with his dear beloved riding on his right and the Lady Daurine at his left, both mounted on quite ornate saddles and accompanied by two lackeys. The knight rode in silence, deep in his thoughts. Daurine, being a gentlewoman and having observed his demeanor, took initiative and began [75r] to speak. “What are you thinking about so intently, sir knight? I believe that I could make our journey seem quicker and home nearer by telling you a lovely and entertaining story. I would very much like to do so, for I wish to tell you about the misadventure that brought me to this palace where I was held prisoner for so long. I am certain that you take pleasure and enjoyment in hearing how a jealous husband gains nothing from his suspicions and machinations and that you will find it is quite just if bad things come to such people, for they truly earn it and deserve it.”

En Route, Daurine Tells Helias about Her Love and How She Was Married to an Old Jealous Man against Her Will. My father, King Doliston, had two daughters, the eldest of whom was kidnapped by a brigand on the coast near the city of Liza. At that time, the poor girl had already been promised in marriage to the son of the king of Armenia, and we have had no news of her since then, despite our efforts to find her. After hearing this, my ladies, Fleurdelise wanted to interrupt Lady Daurine’s story and ask her the name of the mother of the two girls, but Helias, who was eager to hear the end, asked her to [75v] be quiet. “Sweetheart,” he said, “please let her finish.” The lady, who loved

238 Comptes amoureux prie.») La Dame qu’il aymot plus que soymesmes obeit et se teust dont poursuyvit ainsi la damoiselle Daurine. Le jeune gentilhomme, auquel avoit esté ma sœur promise de là en avant creust, et devint à merveilles beau et adroict chevalier en toutes choses. Et n’estant guieres loing une sienne seigneurie du lieu ou faisoit le Roy mon père sa residence, avoit plusieurs honnestes occasions de se retrouver souvent en ma compaignie, dont par l’assidue frequence que nous avions l’ung avec l’aultre, s’engendra en nos cœurs ung immortel et amoureux desir: de manière que je n’estois jamais aise, sinon quand j’estois avec luy: et luy en pareille sollicitude m’aymoit de fine et entiere amour: et moy en mutuel desir envers luy me retrouvois, estimant totallement celluy estre de fer ou plus que obstiné de n’aymer point celluy qui l’aymeroit. Le Roy mon père lequel congnoissoit la gentillesse de ce jeune filz l’aymoit d’affectueux cœur, et le caressoit merveilleusement, tant que ung jour print l’hardiesse mon jeune amy de me demander à mondict Père en mariaige. Mais las, ce fut bien à tard, pource que en ce jour propre de la demande mondict père m’avoit promise à cest infame et vilain jaloux, que naguieres vous avez occis au Palais. La nouvelle en vint tost à moy, or pensez en quelle melencolie j’entray, et si je blasphemoye le Ciel et la nature. «Ahi Dieux iniques, ne poviez vous faire és loix humaines, que les femmes usassent des libertez dont usent les ani[76r]maulx? Quelle des bestes brutes ne vit plus libere et franche que nulle femme? Ahi je vois que la biche dens la forestz, et la columbe ne sont empechées à aymer celluy qui leur plaist en leur espece: et moy infortunée damoiselle je suis donnée à je ne scay qui. Cruelle fortune, traistresse et deceptive, jouyra donc de ma tendre jeunesse celluy vilain mary, et ne me sera loisible de jamais tenir celluy qui est le fil de ma vie, et mon bien souverain! Ja par tous mes Dieux ainsi n’adviendra: bien scauray je ailleurs avoir recours en mes plaisirs. Rien n’est si vray, que le proverbe: l’une chose pense le compaignon, et l’aultre le tavernier. Je souffriray quelque temps, mais ung jour viendra que je le payeray de ses merites. Pour ung bon jour de joye, contente suis d’endurer tout ung moys. Ainsi faisois je mes deliberations à part moy, Sire Helias, mais guieres ne tarda que la jour vint qu’il me convins despartir de Lise la cité, et m’en aller avec mon vilain de mary en Natalye, qui estoit le pays de mon mary. Adoncques je demeuray ne morte ne vive,

Tales and Trials of Love 239 him more than she loved herself, obeyed and stopped speaking, and Lady Daurine continued. The young gentleman to whom my sister had been promised grew up and became a stunningly handsome and upstanding knight in all respects. And since his kingdom was not at all far from the land where my father the king lived, there were often many innocent occasions when he found himself in my company. Due to these frequent meetings, a persistent and tender desire for one another grew within our hearts, to the point that I was uneasy unless I was with him and he, with equal earnestness, was passionately and completely in love with me. I found in myself a relationship based on mutual desire and believed that one must surely have an ironclad heart or be exceedingly obstinate not to return love when one is offered the love of another. My father the king, who recognized the courtliness of this young gentleman, loved him dearly and embraced him wholeheartedly, so much so that one day, my young beloved found the strength to ask my father for my hand in marriage. But, alas, it was too late because on the very day that he asked, my father had promised me to that infamous, villainous, and jealous man that you killed earlier at the palace. The news reached me quickly, so you can imagine how melancholy I felt, and I even cursed the Heavens and the Earth. “Oh, unjust gods, could you not make it so that human law allows women to exercise the same liberties as animals [76r]? So that wild beasts do not live more liberally and freely than do women? Oh, I see that the doe in the forest and the dove are not hindered from loving whomsoever pleases them in their species and I, an unfortunate damsel, am given away to someone I do not know. Cruel, treacherous, and deceptive is fortune. Thus, this villainous husband will delight in my tender youth and never will it be within my power to embrace the one who is my very lifeline and savior! Never will my gods allow this to happen, though I will indeed find recourse to my pleasures. Nothing is as true as is the proverb: your friend thinks one thing while the tavern keeper thinks another. I may suffer for a while, but the day will come when I will give him what he deserves. For one, single day of joy, I am content to endure anything for a month.” Such was the nature of my innermost thoughts, Sir Helias, but there soon came the time when I had to leave the city of Liza and go away to Anatolia with my villainous husband. Then, I felt suspended between life and death, believing that I would never again see my handsome, beloved

240 Comptes amoureux considerant que plus je ne pourrois veoir mon bel amy Theodore, et que j’en serois entieremet privée. Mon mary estoit seigneur de Burse la Cité, et turcq de nation, assez reputé hardy chevallier entre les siens: mais vrayement dens le lict c’estoit ung droict Poltron. Laquelle chose luy congnoissant, me tenoit de pres, non aultrement qu’il eust faict ung chastel assiegé de gensdarmes. Fut jour, fut de nuict jamais ne m’abandonnoit, cependant me cuy[76v]dant contenter de baisers: et si ne permectoit le vilain que le soleil me veit fut soir et matin: car il ne se fyoit de ame vivante. Au fort ayde tousjours le ciel à qui en a mestier. Car mon mary fut contrainct d’aller à la guerre, et ne s’en peult oncques excuser. Comment Hosbegue le Jaloux fut contrainct laisser la belle Daurine sa femme, pour s’en aller avec les turcqs contre L’empereur de Grece. [woodcut] Or passerent les Turcqs contre L’empereur de Grece, et mon mary avec eulx oultre son vouloir. A son departement il me laissa en la garde d’ung sien esclave Eunuche si treshideux, que à le regarder proprement sembloit ung vitupere. Il avoit ung des yeulx guerle, et l’aultre lhermoiant, le né couppé, et au demeurant tout ladre et roigneulx. A cest esclave me bailla en garde mon beau mary, et sur sa vie le menaca de luy faire souf[77r]frir tous les tormens qu’on pourroit penser s’il me abandonnoit seulle, et permectoit que aulcun me tint propos de nuict, ny de jour. Pensez Chevalier, si je fus bien arrivée, et cheust de la paisle en la braise. Cependant que mon mary estoit absent, mon amy Theodore qui perissoit de mon amour, vint en ma ville de Burse, affin de donner quelque refrigere à nostre amour: et de premiere venuë s’attacha à la plus courte voye: c’est qu’il s’addressa à l’esclave Gambon mon gouverneur, lequel à force de dons et presens impetra de pouvoir se retrouver seul avec seulle en ma chambre. Ce qu’il accorda facilement corrompu d’avarice, dont continuames longtemps nos joyes mon amoureux amy et moy sans danger d’aulcun. Mais enfin advint que estant avec moy en grand solas mon amy, arriva tout de nuict mon vilain de mary, lequel hurta asprement, et en grand haste à l’huys avant que nul s’apparceust

Tales and Trials of Love 241 Theodore and that I would forever be deprived of him. My husband was lord of the city of Bursa, a Turk, and a rather well-respected knight among his people, but in bed he was truly useless. Aware of this fact, he guarded me jealously and even had a castle built that was armed with guards. Day or night, he never left my side, thinking [76v] all the while that I took pleasure in his kisses. The scoundrel never even allowed the sun to shine upon me either morning or afternoon, for he trusted not a soul. When worst comes to worst, the Heavens help those who need it most, for my husband was required to go to war, and he could hardly excuse himself from it.

How Hosbegue the Jealous Was Required to Leave His Wife, the Lovely Daurine, in Order to Join the Turks at War against the Emperor of Greece.

And so the Turks went up against the Emperor of Greece, and my husband was with them against his will. When he departed, he left me under the care of one of his eunuch slaves, who was so hideous that to look at him was an insult to the eyes. One of his eyes was squinty and the other teary; his nose was cloven, and on top of that, he was leprous and covered in scabs. My dear husband entrusted me to this slave and made him swear on his life [77r] neither to leave me alone nor to permit anyone to speak to me at any time of day on pain of unimaginable torture. Would you believe me, knight, if I were to tell you that my situation could go from bad to worse? Think of it in this manner: I was walking across hot coals when suddenly, I tripped and fell face first onto live embers.14 All the while my husband was absent, my beloved Theodore, whose love for me became a true affliction, came to my city of Bursa seeking relief from the unremitting flame of love. Upon his arrival, he wanted to reach me as quickly as possible. Thus, he approached the slave, my guardian Gambon, and with gifts and bribes, attempted to con his way into being allowed to see me alone in my room. Corrupted by greed, Gambon easily consented, and my beloved and I continued this practice for a long time without the slightest danger. But finally, it happened: while my beloved and I were in flagrant delight, my villainous husband arrived in the middle

242 Comptes amoureux de sa venué. Si nous fusmes esbays et esperduz ne s’en fault esmerveiller. Incontinent recogneust l’esclave Gambon son maistre à la voix, il accourust à nous disant, «Las nous sumes mortz: que feons nous? Vela mon Seigneur arrivé!» Theodore estoit tant estonné qu’il n’avoit en luy aulcun conseil. Mais je monstray soubdain le moyen d’eschapper: je le prins par la main, et tout bellement le menay à la porte luy disant, que ainsi que mon mary entreroit qu’il meist peine de sortir, et quand à ses habillemens je les luy getterois par la fenestre: car dys je, si une fois vous estes dehors [77v] qui pourra jamais verifier que fussiez avec moy couché? Pourra mon mary brayre dix ans, ne pense pas qu’il le me face confesser: assez dira, «ha meschan tetu me fais plusieurs tors!» Qu’en fera il pourtant? Dolente est celle qui ne treuve point d’escuse au besoing. S’il est necessaire d’interposer juremens, il la bien perdu tout quicte, le cornard.

Comment Hosbegue retournant de Grece arriva de nuict, estant Theodore couché avec Daurine sa femme, et de ce qu’il en advint. Tousjours et de plus fort frapoit à l’huys mon vilain, ayant ja souspecon de si loing differer à ouvrir l’huys, mais l’esclave Gambon par faincte tout hault blasphemoit ses Dieux, disant, qu’il ne pouvoit trouver les clefz: puis disoit «les voicy en la malheure, je les avois caichées dedans le lict. Mon seigneur, vous soyez le bien venu.» Cecy disant mon vilain de mary entroit à l’hostel, et mon cher amy yssoit adoz apres luy, et Gambon soubdain ferma l’huys pendant que mon mary montoit les degrez, il me trouva toute comme endormye, et somnolente, mais il ne se voulut fier à mes mynes, qui luy plantois les cornes à mon beau plaisir: ains print ung cierge, et commence à chercher par tout en la chambre, et par malheur, au pied du lict va mettre la main sur le manteau de mon amy [78r] Theodore, lequel il avoit pour estre trop pressé, oblyé au sortir de ma chambre. Si tost ne l’eust apperceu mon vilain de mary, que Dieu scet comment il commenca à me dire de beaulx oultraiges, et me user de honteux reproches: moy je n’eus pourtant le couraige failly, je persistay totallement à luy nyer les crimes imposez.

Tales and Trials of Love 243 of the night. He had to knock resentfully and insistently at the door before anyone heard him. Needless to say, we were surprised and mortified. The slave Gambon immediately recognized the voice of his master, and he ran to us shouting: “Alas, this is the end of us! What will we do? My lord has returned!” Theodore was so stunned that his mind was void of ideas. But, I quickly showed him how to escape. I took him by the hand and gently led him to the door, telling him that since my husband would be entering, he should take care to leave, and as for his clothes, I would toss them to him through the window, for, I said, once you are outside [77v], who could ever prove that you had been in bed with me? Let my husband scream at me for ten years; never will he compel me to confess. He may well shout: “Oh, you cruel, stubborn woman, you have wronged me many times over.” But what could he possibly do? Wretched is she who cannot find an excuse when she needs one. If necessary, I will riddle my story with affirmations of the truth. How will he know any different, that old cuckold? How Hosbegue, Returning from Greece, Arrived at Night While Theodore was in Bed with His Wife Daurine, and What Happened. My villainous husband was knocking on the door more and more forcefully, and the longer he waited for the door to open, the more suspicious he grew. But, the slave Gambon pretended to curse his gods loudly, saying that he could not find his keys. Then, he said, “There they are, those blasted keys. I had hidden them under the bed. Welcome home, my lord.” After that fiasco, my villainous husband entered the house; my dear beloved snuck out behind him, and Gambon quickly closed the door while my husband was climbing the stairs. He found me sound asleep and dreaming, but he was suspicious of my charade, which was, indeed, allowing me to cuckold him at my leisure. Thus, he took a candle and began to look around the room, and by some stroke of bad luck, at the foot of the bed he laid his hand on my beloved Theodore’s cloak [78r], which he had forgotten in the haste of leaving my room. No sooner had my villainous husband seen it than he began to shout truly outrageous things at me (unfit for even God’s ears) and to reproach me shamefully. I had not, however, lost heart; I was absolutely fervent in denying the crimes of which he accused me.

244 Comptes amoureux Or adoncques eust bien besoing de secours le pauvre Gambon: lequel à mains joinctes requeroit mercy: certes je croy qu’il vouloit lors tout le faict confesser, ne fut que Hosbesgue estoit si terriblement troublé qu’il n’avoit la pacience de l’escouter, de manière que le jour venu au plus matin commanda à ses aultres servitueurs de prendre Gambon, et de le mener pendre, et sans respit. Il fit sonner la trompeste comme est de coustume, quand l’on faict justice de quelque malfaicteur. Sire Chevallier, mon gentil mary jaloux avoit tant de courroux en son cœur accueilly, et estoit si dolent à cause de sa souspecon prinse au manteau trouvé, que riens plus ne desiroit que de veoir son esclave de serviteur pendu au gibet: et de faict ne luy suffit de le commander à l’executeur si luy mesmes n’eust accompaigné la justice. Aufort n’y alla il sinon en habit dissimulé. Comment Theodore par subtil moyen gada l’esclave Gambon d’estre pendu. Or estoit en mon cher amy Theodore cessé la peur pour estre aisement eschappé, dont luy [78v] vint, en y pensant, en memoire comment il avoit laissé son manteau en la chambre de sa Dame: et que danger estoit qu’il n’en sortit du scandale bien grand, mesmement que ne seroit trop asseuré Gambon. Subit il part de son logys et prenant son chemin vers mon palais pour scavoir des nouvelles, va rencontrer le pauvre Gambon lequel on menoit pendre, il se arrest en la voye, et assez facilement recogneust mon mary dissimulé, en cella dissimulant comme homme merveilleusement plein de courroux, s’en vint vers le miserable Gambon, et de premiere entrée luy donna sus le visaige ung grand coup de poingt, disant: «trahitre larron tu le me rendras mon manteau, que tu me desrobis hersoir en la taverne!» Derechief charge sur le miserable grans coups de poingt, en disant, «tu le me rendra mon manteau, ou bien je t’en payray à grans coups comme tu le merites, bien faict ton maistre s’il te faict pendre vilaynement comme tu le merites. «Ou est mon manteau dy meschant larron? Rends le moy!» À peine avoit il achevé ses parolles, qu’il le prent aux cheveux et le traicte Dieu scet de quelle sorte, il luy arrache les cheveux, il l’esgratigne: «je te creveray les yeulx,» dit il «si tu ne me le rends mon manteau meschant larron.»

Tales and Trials of Love 245 Then, poor Gambon was in need of rescue. With clasped hands, he was begging for mercy. I think that he may well have confessed to the deed right then and there had Hosbegue not been so terribly irate that he lacked the patience to hear him, so much so that early the next morning he ordered his other servants to take Gambon to be hanged, and without delay. He ordered the trumpet sounded as was customary when one brings some ill doer to justice. Sir Knight, my dear, jealous husband felt such rage in his heart and was so grief-stricken by his suspicion at having found the cloak that he wanted nothing other than to see his slaveservant hung at the gallows. And, in fact, it did not suffice merely to command the execution unless he himself could witness the act of justice. For this reason, he went along in disguise.

How Theodore Slyly Kept the Slave Gambon from Being Hanged. Since he had easily escaped, my dear, beloved Theodore’s fear subsided. Then he remembered [78v] that he had left his cloak in his lady’s bedchamber and that there was a real danger of creating a great scandal and of placing Gambon in a precarious situation. He quickly went out, and while making his way toward my palace in order to find out what was happening, he happened upon poor Gambon, who was being taken to the gallows. Theodore stopped alongside the road and recognized my disguised husband immediately. He then pretended to be furiously angry, approached poor Gambon and suddenly punched him in the face, shouting, “Treacherous thief! You will give me back my cloak that you stole from me last night in the tavern.” He again threw punches at the wretched man, all the while shouting, “You will give me back my cloak or I will repay you in kind. Your master would do well to have you hanged as villainously as you deserve. “Where is my cloak, say you, nasty thief? Give it back to me.” He had scarcely finished shouting when he grabbed him by the hair and treated him in God-only-knows what manner. He pulled his hair; he clawed at him. “I will dig out your eyes,” he said, “if you do not give me back my cloak, you nasty thief.”

246 Comptes amoureux Ainsi estoit traicté le pauvre Gambon pour celle fois, mais c’estoit affin qu’il fut respité de mort presente. Ce qu’il advint: car mon mary Hosbegue s’esmerveillant de la contenance du jeune homme, qui estoit par semblant si indigné à cause de son manteau, adjousta foy à ses [79r] parolles, comme plusieurs feroient, lesquelz croient de legier. Comment eust il peu penser qu’ung estrangier fut venu de si loing pour suborner et prier sa femme d’amour? Doncques sans aultrement donner à cognoistre qui il estoit, feit retourner arriere le pauvre Gambon. Apres ce luy demanda à part la cause du debat qu’il avoit eu avec cest jeune homme estrangier. Lors Gambon, qui estoit ung fin et maistre valet, luy va compter comment il avoit veritablement prins le manteau pendant qu’ilz bevoient le jour devant à la taverne. Mais trop se plaignoiot d’en avoir porté si dure penitence. Mon pauvre sot de mary adoncques creust totallement qu’il avoit le tort. Ainsi Theodore par son astuce getta Gambon et moy de tout certain peril pour celle fois. Aufort ne croiez que pour celle surpinse je fusse en rien remise en la perception de mes plaisirs: je n’en continuay que mieulx, et dés lors en avant je me suis tousjours efforcé de complaire à celuy que j’ayme plus que moy mesmes, jusques à ce que enfin me suis trouvée enfermée par mon jaloux au Palais enchanté, d’où, au dieu d’Amour graces, vous m’avez delivrée, et luy paié de ses desertes et merites. Sur ce poinct acheva cheres et amourueses dames, dit la belle Cassandre, la gentille Daurine le compte de ses fortunes, desquelles le Chevallier fort s’esmerveilla, et fut tresaise d’avoir secouru la Damoiselle à telle grande necessité. Pareillement mettray je fin à mes longs propos vous en laissant la conclusion aussi me semble il que l’heure [79v] du soupper s’approche, et ses jeunes hommes ont de prendre congé de nous, pour eulx retirer au lieu ou ilz avoient deliberé d’aller. Moult fut louée la gentile Cassandre d’avoir tant gentillement parfourny son compte, et y eust assez de propos tenuz sur ce faict. Lesquelz neantmoins taichoit madame Cebille de refuter comme songes et fables, persistant en ses vœuz de ne jamais aymer: et aymast qui voulut. Car d’elle, sa conclusion estoit telle que ce n’estoit que toute folie. Las la pauvrette, Ainsi estoit elle endurcye par le vouloir des Dieux offensez à ce que apres en fut la punition plus honteuse et cruelle, lors qu’elle abandonneroit son honnesteté tant deffenduë

Tales and Trials of Love 247 He badly mistreated poor Gambon at the time, but it was so that he might be spared an imminent death. And his plan worked, for my husband Hosbegue, marveling at the countenance of the young man who appeared so furious about his cloak, believed his story [79r], as any gullible person would do. How could he have thought that a stranger could have come from so far away in order to corrupt his wife and beseech her love? Therefore, without even bothering to find out who the man was, he had poor Gambon sent back. Later on, he took him aside and asked him about the cause of the dispute that he had had with this young man. Then Gambon, who was an adept and experienced manservant, told him how he really had taken the cloak the day before while drinking at the tavern. And he went on to complain at length about the heavy price he had been obliged to pay for his actions. At the time, my poor idiot of a husband completely believed that he was wrong. This is how Theodore slyly delivered Gambon and me from an all-too-certain peril. However, do you think that this inconvenience would cause me to neglect my desires? I only gave in to them more freely, and from that time on, I applied myself completely to pleasing my beloved (whom I love more than I do myself), until I found myself locked away by my jealous husband in the enchanted palace, from where (thanks to the god of Love) you delivered me and paid him his just deserts and recompense. “On this note, dear ladies-in-love,” said the lovely Cassandre, “the charming Daurine concluded the tale of her misfortune. The knight was amazed by her story and was quite pleased to have rescued a lady in such great need. Likewise, I will put an end to my lengthy story, leaving you to guess at the conclusion.15 I believe that dinnertime [79v] is approaching and that these young men must take leave of us in order to set off for where they intend to go.” Everyone greatly praised sweet Cassandre for having so kindly presented her tale, and they discussed it at length. Madame Cebille, nevertheless, attempted to refute it as mere fantasy and fairy-tale, persisting in her vow never to love nor to accept love. She was of the opinion that love is nothing but folly. Alas, the poor thing had so offended the gods that they had hardened her heart in order to render her future punishment all the more shameful and cruel. When she finally abandoned all propriety (a quality that she had quite jealously defended) to a villainous and foul

248 Comptes amoureux à ung vilain et sale palefrenier, avec lequel lyée toute nuë fut par son mary justement indigné, exposée emmy la ruë au spectacle de tout le peuple. Comment les six jeunes hommes Lyonnoys se voulant despartir furent pries par les dames de demeurer au soupper, pour ouyr la fin des Comptes Amoureux. Sur ce voulurent prendre congé les jeunes hommes survenuz, et ja estoient les cehvaulx bridez en la Court quand la belle Cassandre va reprendre la parolle, et toute joyeuse, et soubriant dict: «Moy et les Dames qui icy sumes scavons que voz plus urgens affaires vous tirent au retour, parquoy [80r] ne vous vouldroins aulcunement presser de demeurer. Auffort, Seigneurs Amys, scaichant aussi qu’il suffira si despartez d’icy demain au plus matin, vous prions de demeurer au soupper. Je suis certaine que plus gros plaisir ne scauriez faire à madame Salphionne nostre bonne, et gratieuse hostesse, pource ne nous refusez point: et vous aultres mes Dames priez les en, chascune endroit soy. Adonc ques toutes les Dames se mirent en devoir de les arrester, et mesmes madame Salphionne cependant faict desrober les selles aux chevaulx. Parquoy eulx se voiant ainsi pressez s’accoderent de demeurer ce soir: les tables furent incontinent dressées, si s’assirent en pareil ordre que au disner: et les traicta madame Salphionne avec une si grande opulence de viandes precieuses et delicates, que mieulx on n’eust peu en la ville. Fin du sixiesme Compte Amoureux.

Tales and Trials of Love 249 groom, her justifiably offended husband bound her naked to her lover and exposed her in the middle of the street for all to see.

How the Ladies Begged the Six Young Men from Lyon to Stay for Dinner in Order to Hear the End of the Tales of Love, Although They Wanted to Leave. On that note, the unexpected guests motioned to leave, and their horses were already bridled in the courtyard, when the lovely Cassandre began to speak again and, all joyful and smiling, said, “All of the ladies here, myself included, know that your urgent affairs call you away, and for this reason [80r], we certainly do not wish to press you to stay. However, dear friends, knowing also that it will suffice if you leave early in the morning, we pray you stay for dinner. I am certain that nothing would bring greater pleasure to our lovely and gracious hostess, Madame Salphionne, so do not refuse us. And as for the rest of you ladies, do please beg them to stay, each of you.” And then all the ladies took it upon themselves to retain the men, and in the meantime, Madame Salphionne even removed the harnesses from the horses. For this reason, seeing that they were so urged to stay, they agreed to remain for the evening. The tables were quickly set; they all sat in the same places as they had at lunch, and Madame Salphionne treated them to such a great abundance of precious meats and delicacies that no one else in town could rival the spread. Here ends the sixth Tale of Love.

250 Comptes amoureux COMPTE SEPTIESME par Madame Briolayne Fusque: touchant les maulvaises fortunes de messire Guillien de Campestain de Rossillon.

Or sur l’issuë du soupper va dire en ceste manière madame Briolayne Fusque, belle et [80v] amoureuse Dame au possible, et laquelle pour avoir la possession du cœur d’ung vray et loyal sien Amant, se tenoit toute heureuse et toute riche en Amours. «Attentifvement j’ay les poinctz notez du compte de la jeune Cassandre. Laquelle chose m’a incitée, mesmement pour augmenter les terreurs au cœur de celle horride et froide femme, que voiez là seoir pasle et en silence versant en son cœur ne scay quelle chose de cruel, de y adjouster encores: et dire pleinement que la cruelle vengeance prinse de la mort de Guillien de Campestain peult rendre tesmoingnage en quelle reverence, et honneur estoient soubstenus et emparez les loyaulx Amants. Cestuy Guillien de Campestain estoit ung Gentilhomme du pays de Rossillon, de bonne et grosse maison et parentée. Dont les excellentes vertus et bonne grace, de quoy à sa naissance par madame nature il avoit esté amplement pourveu et enrichy, n’admoindrissoient en rien le lieu de sa dicte naissance, mais l’augmentoient tresgrandement, de manière qu’il estoit de chascun, qui le cognoissoit aymé, et chery. Il estoit beau à merveilles, droict, et advenant en toutes ses actions: et jamais de chose ne se mesloit qu’il n’en sortit avec son grand honneur: fut à manyer tout genre d’armes à pied et à cheval, fut à se trouver avec les Dames et damoiselles: desquelles invisiblement à peu de peine il sembloit desrober les cœurs. Quand il chantoit quelque motet qu’il eust composé nouvellement (car il fut tresexcellent poète de son temps, et encores en restent [81r] ses eloquentes et doctes œuvres, ou la perle des Italiens Poëtes Messire Francois Petrarche a espuisé subtilement plusieurs sonnetz, on eust proprement dit qu’il n’estoit possible trouver en tout le monde voix si harmonieuse et sonante. Et à vray dire on pense que Orpheus et Linus tous deux engendrez de Apollo Dieu de la Musique, ne furent onques à comparager à cestuy cy.

Tales and Trials of Love 251 TALE SEVEN Told by Madame Briolayne Fusque, Pertaining to the Tragic End of Master Guillien de Campestain de Roussillon.

As everyone rose from the supper table, Madame Briolayne Fusque, the most beautiful and [80v] love-struck woman imaginable (and who appeared quite joyful and besotted since she possessed the heart of a true and faithful lover) began to speak: “I took care to note the important bits of Madame Cassandre’s tale. Doing so incited me to add a few more, just in order to heighten the fear of that horrible and cold woman whom you see over there. All the color has drained from her face, and as she sits there silently, she harbors all manners of strange, cruel things in her heart. This also motivated me to tell you unreservedly that the cruel vengeance that resulted in Guillien de Campestain’s death should serve as a testimony to the fact that loyal lovers elicit and sustain high esteem and honor.” The aforementioned Guillien de Campestain was a gentleman from Roussillon who hailed from a respected and affluent family and lineage.1 At his birth, Mother Nature had amply equipped and enriched him with excellent qualities and charm (which certainly did not diminish the renown of his ancestry in the slightest, but rather augmented it tremendously), so much so that all those who knew him loved and cherished him. He was marvelously handsome, just and upstanding in all his actions and never involved himself in any matter that could call his honor into question, whether it be a matter related to combat (either hand-to-hand or on horseback) or a discussion among gentlemen and gentlewomen (whose hearts he had a way of imperceptibly and effortlessly stealing). When he sang a little tune that he had recently composed (for he was an excellent poet for his time, and there still remain [81r]2 a number of his eloquent and inventive works, from which the greatest of all Italian poets, Master Francesco Petrarch,3 slyly borrowed several sonnets), everyone said—and rightfully so—that it would be impossible to find anywhere in the world another such harmonious and sonorous voice. Everyone truly believed that neither Orpheus nor Linus (both engendered by Apollo, the god of music) could rival this man.4

252 Comptes amoureux Davantaige il estoit tant beau parleur tant estoit sa loquence necte et expediée, que riens plus. Au faict de danser et baller on l’estimoit sans faveur le paragon et le vray patron à tous qui s’en vouloient mesler. En son habit il n’estoit aulcunement superflu, ny rustique, ains y tenoit ung louable et honneste moyen. Mais sur tout il prenoit gros deduict à la chasse, et là joyeusement la plus part du temps il se occupoit. [woodcut] Comment la Duchesse de Rossillon fut Amoureuse de Guillien de Campestain. [81v] Doncques messire Guillien fut par son honnesteté et beaulté tant recommandé envers tous, mesmement envers les belles Dames, que le plus souvent sortoient entre elles plusieurs griefves contentions à qui l’auroit pour sieur et amy: et estoient les pauvretes en continuel soucy pour luy, mais gaigna le pris la Duchesse de Rossillon belle et jeune princesse aultant que aultre de son temps. Si eussent esté les Amants plus que heureux. Mais Fortune, qui ne laisse jamais en paix ceulx, qui sont en bonheur et joye trop longuement, qu’elle ne leur mesle quelque brouet de son amaire tresaigre Cuysine, eust envie sur messire Guillien en telle sorte que je vous diray. Icelle Dame n’avoit pas demeuré encorez demy an avec Raymon de Castel son mary, qui n’estoit de beaucoup si gentil en toutes facons, quand elle devint à l’instigation de celle beaulté et bonne grace (ou plustost, pource que Amour, qui s’esbat à remettre tousjours quelqu’ung soubs sa domination) amoureuse de Guillien: voire en telle sorte qu’il n’est possible de le plus estre. Tout son bien et solas reposoit en la veuë et compaignie de son jeune et nouvel amy: et toute sa tristesse se retrouvoit en l’absence d’icelluy mesme. Ne passa doncques guieres de temps qu’elle par malheur de fortune, et pour autant aussi qu’elle n’estoit assez experte au faict d’aymer, s’entroblia au dissimuler.

Tales and Trials of Love 253 Furthermore, he was a skilled orator, for the clarity and expediency of his speech were unparalleled. As for dancing and court pageantry, everyone considered him unequalled in skill; he was a true patron of all the arts in which he took an interest. In his dress, he was not in the least excessive, nor was he unrefined. In other words, he carried himself in a most honorable and honest manner. Above all else, he took great pleasure in the hunt, a pastime that occupied a great deal of his time, much to his delight.

How the Duchess of Roussillon Fell in Love with Guillien de Campestain. [81v] Thus, everyone (both men and women) commended Master Guillien for his honesty and attractiveness. There were several heated debates among the ladies as to who would have him as her suitor and lover and, although many a woman whiled away the time fantasizing about him, the Duchess of Roussillon (who was as lovely a young princess as there was at the time) won the prize.5 And the young lovers might well have been quite happy were it not for Fortune.6 She never leaves those who are happy and joyful at peace for too long without concocting some sort of bitter, unpleasant brew. And indeed, I am about to tell you how she targeted Master Guillien. The above-mentioned lady had not yet lived half a year with her husband Raymon de Castel (who was not by any means very genteel) when Guillien’s beauty and charm caught her eye, causing her to fall head over heels in love with him (or one might blame it on Cupid, who amuses himself at subjecting others to his whims). Her well-being and happiness depended solely on the presence and companionship of her new, young lover. Likewise, her sadness rested solely in his absence. Only a short time had passed when, due to a poor stroke of luck (as well as her inexperience in the art of love), she neglected to conceal her clandestine relationship.

254 Comptes amoureux [82r] Raymon de Castel se courrousse à sa femme pource qu’elle ayme aultre que soy, la menassant de s’en venger. [woodcut] Parquoy Raymon assez facillement eust congnoissance de l’amour alienée. Il en eust bien (mes Dames) en son cœur telle melancolye, raige, et jalouzie, que presque il en mouroit. Si ne se peult oncques tenir de s’en complaindre mortellement à sa femme en la menaceant de la tuer, s’il la rencontroit en la compaignie de Guillien. Mais bien peu de compte feit de telle deffense: Car comme vous congnoissez (mes dames) là n’est le moyen plus court aux mariz pour nous garder d’aymer, et plustost diray je, ce sont incitements davantaige à porter amour plus eschauffée en la chose deffenduë et prohibée. Or Raymon de Castel appercevant qu’il n’y avoit ordre ne voulut neantmoins refuir au remede, qui est commun à nos jaloux: c’est de battre et tormenter la Dame, ains delibera de tuer Guillien, esperant que luy mort seroit aussi estaincte celle constante et ferme Amour. [82v]De faict (que je le vous face court) advint que au retour de la Chasse il va luy sixiesme rencontrer messire Guillien tout seul fors seullement d’ung paige menant deux levriers en laisse, il portoit ung oiseau sur le poingt, et s’en revenoit à Rossillon joyeulx à merveilles, et chantoit ung sonnet, qu’il avoit composé ce jour la à la louenge de sa mieulx aymée. Raymon appercevant de loing son ennemy ressembloit au Tyrans du temps passé qui faisoient martyriser les pauvres Chrestiens, desquelz la cruaulté, l’ire, et courroux surpasse l’indignation des Lyons. Soubdain il brusle d’ire ardante, et s’esmouvant à la manière des Titans, s’escrie horriblement. Certes traistre meschant icy vous comperrez vostre tresorde luxure, que vous avez en ma femme longtemps exercée. A celle voix cruente et de mort, messire Guillien fut esperdu oultre mesure, et gemist pour non avoir lieu de refuge. Assez se veult excuser, mais le Duc qui avoit juré la mort de luy, ne le voulut oncques ouyr, il gette ung grand coup d’espée que Guillien receupt sur son manteau.

Tales and Trials of Love 255 [82r] Raymon de Castel Chastens His Wife Because She Loves Another and Threatens to Avenge Himself. For this reason, Raymon rather easily found out about his wife’s transgression. My ladies, I assure you that he felt such melancholy, rage, and jealousy in his heart that it nearly killed him. And thus, he could not keep himself from shouting vilely at his wife, threatening to kill her if he found her with Guillien. But such a strategy is of little avail, for as you know, my ladies, this is not the most efficient way to hold on to the love of one’s spouse, and moreover I will tell you, this only further incites and intensifies the appeal of the very thing that is forbidden and prohibited. And so Raymon de Castel, realizing that his household was in disarray, nevertheless did not wish to rely on the usual solution, one that is common among our jealous husbands, that is to batter and to torment his wife. Thus, he decided to kill Guillien, hoping that ending his life also would extinguish his wife’s persistent and unyielding love. [82v] And so it happened (to make a long story short) that on returning from the hunt with five other companions, he encountered Master Guillien, who was all alone except for a page, leading two hares on a leash and carrying a bird on the wrist. He was returning from Roussillon in good spirits and was singing a sonnet that he had composed on that very day in honor of his beloved. On catching sight of his enemy at a distance, Raymon bore a striking resemblance to the tyrants of the olden days who persecuted the poor Christians, driving them to martyrdom, and whose cruelty, ire, and fury surpassed even the most ferocious lion in its indignation. Suddenly, he felt an ardent rage wield up within him and, rivaling the fury of the Titans,7 cried out hideously: “Malicious traitor, the time has come for you to pay for that loathsome gluttony that you have so long exerted on my wife.” This cruel and deathly voice horrified Master Guillien beyond belief, and he trembled at the thought of having no place to retreat. Guillien earnestly entreated the Duke’s mercy, but the latter (who had vowed to kill Guillien) wished to hear none of it and plunged his sword straight through Guillien’s cloak.

256 Comptes amoureux Comment le pauvre Guillien fut mis à mort cruelle par le Duc de Rossillon et ses gens. [83r]

Alors les gens du Duc à son exhortation commencerent à l’assaillir à la facon des chiens qui assaillent le cerf au boys. Guillien se deffent de toute sa puissance, leur reprochant trop leur lacheté d’assaillir ung homme seul: imploroit trespiteusement les Dieux à son ayde. Longuement dura la meslée par ce que l’assailly se deffendoit comme pour saulver la vie, mais les ennemys estoient trop. Combien qu’en troys coups qu’il rua cheurent mors le cousin du Duc et deux aultres. Quoy voiant Raymon comme homme enraigé s’escria, «Seigneurs, nous eschappera ainsi ce ribault?» A ce cry eulx troys ensemble se ruerent sur luy. Ainsi restat mort en la place le meilleur, le plus beault, le plus honneste, le plus gratieulx, le plus aymé et de bonnaire Chevallier qui se trouva pour lors. Dont fut grande pitié: et par le Duc commise une des plus meschantes trahison, qu’on pourroit pourpenser: et certes en celluy trop funeste, trop malheureux jour digne d’estre merché à tous temps de croye noyre, les Muses perdirent l’ung de leurs [83v] meilleurs enfans. L’execrable Duc non encores content de veoir son Ennemy occis, duquel la dignité des beaulx cheveulx dorez auparavant surpassants la beaulté de ceulx de Euphorbus Troyen: estoit deturpée et soillée par le sang meslé de pouldre, luy va fendre l’estomach, et en tira le cœur dehors, qu’il emporta avec soy: si le feit mettre apres en potaige et menger à sa femme. Quand elle l’eust mengé: «Qu’en dictes vous,» dit il, «Dame, de celle viande? Est elle bonne?» «Pour vray mon seigneur,» respond elle, «ouy, et est de moult bon goust.» «C’est le cœur de vostre amy Guillien,» dit le Duc.

Tales and Trials of Love 257 How the Duke of Roussillon and His Men Killed Poor Guillien. [83r] Then, on his command, the Duke’s men attacked him as fiercely as dogs chasing after a doe in the woods. Guillien defended himself with all his might, reproaching them loudly for their cowardice in assaulting a lone man. A piteous sight, he implored the gods to his aid. The struggle continued for some time, for the victim was fighting for his life. But his assailants were too much for him. He fought so valiantly that he killed the Duke’s cousin and two others with only three quick thrusts of his sword. Seeing this, Raymon cried out in rage, “Lords, will you allow this rogue to escape us in this manner?” Thus entreated, they threw themselves on top of him, all at once. And this is how the best, most handsome, most honest, most gracious, most beloved and debonair knight ever to grace the face of this Earth met his end. His death was a great shame, and the Duke committed one of the most heinous treacheries imaginable. And, most assuredly, the Muses lost one of their finest on this most funereal, grievous day, a day worthy of being marked in black chalk for all eternity. [83v] That execrable Duke still was not content on seeing his enemy killed, whose handsome, golden locks (which had once surpassed in splendor those of the Trojan Euphorbus) were defiled, their former dignity soiled by a mixture of blood and powder.8 The Duke then cleaved into his stomach, extracted his heart and carried it with him in order to have it cooked into a stew and served to his wife. When she had eaten it, he said: “What say you, my wife, about this meat? Is it good?” “It certainly is, my Lord,” she replied, “Yes, and it has a most delectable flavor.” “It is the heart of your lover Guillien,” said the Duke.9

258 Comptes amoureux Comment la Duchesse fut marrye d’avoir mengé le cœur de son amy Guillien. [woodcut] A celle parolle devint la Dame toute pleine de douleur, qu’elle resembla le petit enfant qu’on ne oyt au commencer ses pleurs, apres s’esclata en tant amere lamentation, que quiconques fut lors [84r] present, en print pitié. «Hai meschant et cruel homme tu m’as presentement faict menger une si delicieuse viande que je n’en gousteray jamais de plus savoureuse.» Ce dit, se serrant le cœur par incroiable detresse, cheut sur le pavement: et l’esprit d’elle, qui ne pouvoit rester seul sans l’ame de Guillien, s’envola vers le ciel, abandonnant son corps froit et sans couleur. Or fut tantost la nouvelle par tout espandue de la cruaulté de Raymon: si que le Roy Alphonse d’Aragon adverty incontinant alla à main armée contre le cruel, et tant luy fit il forte guerre qu’il le print en ung fort chasteau: et pour punition de son mesfaict le feit mourir en prison perpetuelle. Apres ce, feit eslever les corps de Guillien et de son amye en une riche chasse d’or sus quatres colonnes de ambre moult richement tout au devant du grand temple de Rossillon: ou les dames de la Province par longue espace de temps continuerent d’aller faire leurs oblations, y respandans chapeaulx de fleurs en l’honneur et reverence du sainct Amour. Si doncques dame Cebille les roys et peuples ont tant estez offfensez par le meffaict et cruaulté de Raymon, pensez vous que l’Amour és dames soit chose improbe et digne de reprehention? Quant est de moy: je n’estime de si haulte divinité aulcune maulvaise chose: j’en suis toute resolue, vous signifiant que si le myen amy estoit icy present, luy monstreroys ceste nuyct qu’elle est mon affection envers luy, assez laissant celle miserable gemir et plaindre eternellement. Alors qu’elle eust achevé de dire, [84v] tous se leverent de table, et avoir dansé quelque piece, sur l’heure de deux heures apres minuict se retirerent pour dormir.

Tales and Trials of Love 259 How the Duchess Was Afflicted by Having Eaten the Heart of Her Lover Guillien. On hearing this, the lady grew so sorrowful that one would have taken her for a small child, who begins to weep and then lets out such a bitter wail that anyone present [84r] would take pity on him. “You abhorrent, despicable, and cruel man, you just made me eat such a precious meat that never will such a delicacy pass my lips.” Once she had spoken, she felt such indescribable distress that she clutched her heart, fell onto the floor, and her spirit (unable to survive without the company of Guillien) flew up to the heavens, abandoning her cold, lifeless body. And so the news of Raymon’s cruelty traveled quickly, so quickly that King Alfonso of Aragon10 heard word of it and arrived immediately, bearing arms against the villain and fighting him so fiercely that he captured a fortified castle and punished Raymon’s misdeed by leaving him to die in prison. After this, he raised the bodies of Guillien and of his beloved in a rich, golden shrine atop four splendid marble columns before the great temple of Roussillon.11 This has long been a place of pilgrimage for the ladies of Provence, who go there to pay their respects and to scatter garlands of flowers in honor and reverence of Saint Cupid. “If, Madame Cebille, the kings and their subjects were so offended by Raymon’s misdeed and cruelty, do you truly believe that love is so dishonorable and reprehensible an act for women? In my opinion, I do not think that such a revered god as Cupid could possibly prescribe anything blameworthy. Indeed, I am so resolute in this belief that if my own lover were here, I would demonstrate to him the extent of my affection for him right here and now, leaving this wretched woman to her incessant wails and complaints.” As soon as she had said this, [84v] everyone rose from the table and, after having danced a few rounds, withdrew to bed at two o’clock in the morning.

260 Comptes amoureux Jeanne Flore au lecteur: Madame Fusque ayant fourny son compte D’amour, lequel les cœurs endurciz dompte, Je t’ay voulu pour la conclusion Bien advertir que tout ce, est fiction De poësie. Et pource donc ne gloses Point aultrement en mon œuvre les choses, Qu’elles ne sont à mon desavantaige. Je blasme icy l’impareil mariaige: Aussi de vray est il bien à blasmer: Quand il en vient ung fruict tant fort amer Que le solas, par la disconvenance Des Mariez, se tourne en desplaisance. Fin des Comptes Amoureux Imprimés nouvellement à Lyon.

Tales and Trials of Love 261 Jeanne Flore to the Reader:1 Madame Fusque having told her tale of love, Which those with hard hearts take the power of, I would like, by way of a conclusion, To warn you it has all been an illusion— Poetic license—so do not read into2 My work what is not there, nor misconstrue Things to my disadvantage.3 It is clear: Mismatched marriage is what I’m blaming here; Indeed, it’s right to blame it—for consider, How it produces fruit so very bitter That the couple, thus unjustly suited, Find but grief—with all their joys uprooted. Here end the Tales of Love recently printed in Lyon.

Translation Notes Madame Egine Minerve to Noble Ladies-in-Love 1. For a discussion of this poem, see the introduction to this volume, pages 22–33. 2. On the image of a sighted and blind Cupid in literary and art history, see Erwin Panofsky, “Blind Cupid,” in Studies in Iconology (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 95–128.

Epistle 1. In this letter, the author inverts the addressee-recipient relationship of the prefatory poem. Here, Jeanne Flore greets her correspondent, Madame Minerve, and defines the rhetorical space that will shape the book’s reception. Jeanne Flore situates her collection of tales in an isolated, temporary and jovial community made up solely of women. I discuss Lorraine Code’s notion of rhetorical space in the introduction. For further information on this concept, see her Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (New York: Routledge, 1995), ix. 2. Throughout this work, many of Jeanne Flore’s vocabulary choices are ambiguous and perplexing. A primary example occurs when Flore refers to the other storytellers as cousines, a term that one could interpret, according to Algirdas Julien Greimas and Teresa Mary Keane, either as a “terme de politesse” (a form of courtesy) or as a “courtisane; fille de joie” (a courtesan or prostitute). See their Dictionnaire du moyen français: La Renaissance (Paris: Larousse, 1992), s.v. “cousine.” Similar ambiguities are addressed in subsequent notes. 3. Jeanne Flore describes the ensuing literary offerings as comptes. Randle Cotgrave indicates that the term could imply “an account, a reckoning; a computation, or calculation” or “a fib, gull, tale; an idle, or unlikelie tale, historie, relation.” A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Slip, 1611; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1971), s.v. “compte.” See also Claude La Charité, “Le problème du genre dans Les Comptes amoureux de Jeanne Flore: l’ambivalence du terme ‘compte,’ ” in Actualité de Jeanne Flore, ed. Diane DesrosiersBonin, Eliane Viennot, and Régine Reynolds-Cornell (Paris: Champion, 2004), 209–25. 4. The vendange (wine harvest), associated with Bacchus, suggests a carnivalesque atmosphere, further underscoring the potentially ludic nature of the collection. Similarly, Verdun-L. Saulnier notes in Maurice Scève (ca. 1500–1560) that men belonging to the unofficial confraternity of Lyonnais writers, the sodalitium lugdunensis, gathered together for basoches, during which they regaled on good food, enjoyed an abundance of wine, and recited verse of various genres—from epic to erotic (Geneva: Slatkine, 2003, repr., Paris edition, 1948–1949), 132 and 195–200.

262

Translation Notes 263 5. Here, the author names eight storytellers. Add to these the two women (Jeanne Flore and Madame Minerve) whose names appear in the prefatory poem and epistle, the latter of whom also ostensibly narrates one of the tales, for a total of ten storytellers. Although the women mention Madame Cebille in the frame narratives, she does not offer a story within the collection, nor does Madame Hortence or Madame Lucienne. Madame Sapho introduces the fifth tale, which Madame Salphionne closes in the Comptes amoureux, but not in the Pugnition de l’amour contempné. Two additional women, Madame Cassandre and Madame Briolayne Fusque, recount the sixth and seventh tales, respectively, but are not named in the epistle. 6. The adjective gentil (and the feminine gentille) could refer to both the described person’s moral character and social status. The author’s frequent use of related nouns and descriptive adjectives throughout the collection, including in this epistle, indicate that the storytellers are gracious and learned (de bonne grace et sçavoir) and of elevated social status (de gentille noblesse aornées). 7. In the epistle, Jeanne Flore alludes to the conditions of the collection’s conception, its production and its projected reception, a microcosm of women’s literary activity at the time. See also the introduction to this volume, pages 14–22. There also is ample evidence that chivalric tales were particularly popular among women readers, although they were vehemently proscribed in didactic literature. Jean Luis Vivès, for example, acknowledges reading as a suitable pastime for women if restricted to “the study of wisdom, which forms morals in the way of virtue, […] which teaches the best and holiest way of life.” The Education of a Christian Woman, trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 71. However, he continues on a vitriolic tirade against popular chivalric literature, describing it as a “pestilence” among idle men and women (73–74). For a description of patterns of women’s literacy, see Susan Broomhall, Women in the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (London: Ashgate, 2002). For discussions of the various genres that made up women’s literature at the time, see Louis B. Wright, “The Reading Renaissance English Woman,” Studies in Philology 28 (1939): 139–56 and Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978).

Tale One 1. Here, Madame Melibée indicates that Madame Salphionne’s tale preceded hers. However, the latter’s tale (attributed to Madame Sapho in the Pugnition) is the fifth to be told in the Comptes amoureux. Furthermore, Madame Melibée alludes to tales that Madame Cebille and Madame Lucienne each offered, leaving one to wonder whether the extant editions of the Comptes amoureux were incomplete or hastily edited. 2. Madame Cebille is the one dissident voice among this gathering of storytellers. It is the will to disprove her stance that motivates the telling of the tales.

264 Translation Notes 3. In the world of Jeanne Flore’s storytellers, the goddess Venus and her son, Cupid, reign supreme, answering the prayers of their loyal devotees and punishing those who disregard their teachings. One might suggest a parallel between the pagan mother-son pair of Venus and Cupid and the Christian mother-son pair of Mary and Jesus. Venus, the daughter of Dione and Jupiter (supreme Roman deity and god of the sky and thunder), took on the qualities of the Greek Aphrodite (goddess of love) in Roman mythology. She often is associated with beauty, sensuality, and fertility. Cupid, the poetic epithet for the Roman child-god Amor (Amour in French), is the son of Venus and Vulcan and developed from the tradition of the Greek god of love, Eros, a winged child-god carrying a bow and quiver of arrows. Indeed, the works of Renaissance artists and intellectuals display a strong tendency to superimpose the pagan and Christian traditions. Ingrid Rowland, From Heaven to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance (New York: New York Review Books, 2005), 4, 11, notes: “Contemporaries identified the turning point into the Renaissance with an intellectual movement, which they called ‘the rebirth of letters’ or ‘humane studies.’ The movement drew its inspiration from the close scrutiny and emulation of ancient Latin, and eventually Greek, literature […]. [However,] like-minded citizens of this reborn world had no more plans for a real return to the old days than the fairgoers at modern Renaissance fairs: they clung to their Christian religion […].” Robert Cottrell, The Grammar of Silence: A Reading of Marguerite de Navarre’s Poetry (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 222, explains the homogeneity between the Christian and pagan traditions and the effort of Christian humanists such as Marguerite de Navarre to reconcile the two in their works: “In both the Neoplatonic tradition, especially as reinterpreted by Ficino, and the mystic Christian tradition, which relied heavily on the rhetoric of love, eros and agape were viewed as two manifestations of the divine principle of love, which is God Himself. In the Suyte des Marguerites, Marguerite de Navarre present[s] love as a Cupid who grows up and becomes Christ. […] Christ is the mature form of Cupid. […] Eros and agape are indissolubly linked.” See also the introduction to this volume, pp. 27–31. 4. The name Rosemonde Chiprine aligns the mal mariée of this story with the goddess Venus, whose Greek counterpart, Aphrodite, was believed to have been born near the coastal city of Paphos, on the island of Cyprus (Chypre in French). She is thus the Cyprian goddess. In Greek mythology and in Hesiod’s epic poem Theogony (ca. 700 BC), Aphrodite is associated with sea foam. See Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. EvelynWhite (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 185–205, Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper. Sandro Botticelli draws from this tradition in his painting The Birth of Venus (c. 1485), located in the Uffizi Gallery, in which the goddess Venus rises from the sea on a scallop shell. A reproduction of this painting is available in Appendix 3. 5. This image calls to mind the late-medieval allegory of the Dance of Death (Danse macabre), illustrating the universality of death and the necessity of repentance. Hans Holbein the Younger designed a series of woodcuts illustrating the Dance of Death in the early sixteenth

Translation Notes 265 century. Around the time that Jeanne Flore’s work was published, at least two Lyonnais editions were printed, Les simulachres et historiees faces de la mort (Lyon: Melchior and Gaspar Treschel, 1538 and 1542). Several other editions, in both Latin and French, were printed in Lyon throughout the sixteenth century. See Francis Douce, Esq., “Chapter VI,” in Holbein’s Dance of Death Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood, with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of the Subject (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858), 78–93. Google e-book. See also Appendix 3 for an example of the woodcut engravings from the Dance of Death, “Death and the Old Man,” depicting the skeletal figure of Death escorting a crippled, elderly man to his grave. 6. In Greek mythology, Harpies, or snatchers, are the daughters of Thaumas and Electra. They are imagined as vile and vicious birds with women’s faces; they often inflict punishment. See, for example, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (7.6–7), trans. and ed. Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004). Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a ubiquitous work in sixteenth-century France and a principle source for mythological references. For this reason, I offer a reference to this work when relevant. On the Metamorphoses during the Renaissance, see Ann Moss, Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Paul Barolsky, “As in Ovid, so in Renaissance Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 51.2 (1998): 451–74. See also the introduction to this volume, page 22–23, 27. For editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses printed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, see La Bible des poetes de Methamorphoze, ed. Thomas Walleys and trans. Colard Mansion (Paris: A. Vérard, 1493) and Le Grand olympe des hystoires poetiques du prince de poësie Ovide Naso en sa Metamorphose (Lyon: Denys de Harsy/Romain Morin, 1532). Both are available in the rare book collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and have been digitized. http://gallica.bnf.fr. 7. Lake Avernus is a circular, volcanic crater lake in southern Italy near Naples; the Romans believed it to be the entrance to Hades. In book six of Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. Robert Fagles, ed. Bernard Knox (New York: Penguin, 2006), 3.518–24, Aeneas descends into the Underworld through a cave found beside the lake. 8. This unfavorable portrait of marriage calls to mind Erasmus’s colloquy, Coniugium impar (A Marriage in Name Only, or The Unequal Marriage), in which friends Gabriel and Petronius are discussing a recent wedding ceremony. The two lament over the bride’s parents having paired her with an elderly groom, whose body is disease-ridden and appearance is gruesome. See Colloquies, of The Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. and trans. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 40:842–59. Erasmus also wrote a declamatio against mismatched marriages, Encomium matrimonii, which Louis de Berquin translated into French in 1525 as Déclamation des louenges de mariage. This work is available in a facsimile edition, ed. Émile Telle (Geneva: Droz, 1976). Berquin was a French noble who sought church reform and was burned at the stake in 1529.

266 Translation Notes On the reconsideration of marriage among reformist circles, see Reinier Leushuis, Le Mariage et l’amitié courtoise dans le dialogue et le récit bref de la Renaissance (Florence: L. Olschki, 2003) and the introduction to this volume, pages 33–37, 41–48. 9. Euclio is an elderly miser in the Roman comedy Aulularia by Plautus (ca. 250–184 BC). Euclio finds a treasure trove buried in his home, but, fearful of being robbed of the treasure, he hides it and pretends to live in poverty. See Aulularia, or The Concealed Treasure, in Comedies of Plautus, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Esq. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1912). 10. Phoebus is an epithet for the Greek god Apollo meaning “bright.” Apollo embodies the male ideals of beauty, virtue, learning, and athleticism, and he also is the god of light, occasionally identified with the sun. He is the son of Zeus (whose Roman counterpart is Jupiter) and Leto. 11. The floating island is Delos, a small island in the Aegean sea and the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis. 12. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2.1143–3.9), Jupiter falls in love with Europa, the daughter of King Agenor of Tyre, and transforms himself into a bull in order to seduce and abduct her. Amphitryon loses his wife, Alcmena, to Jupiter when the latter disguises himself as her husband in his absence. Hercules (Heracles in the Greek tradition) is the child of this union. See Metamorphoses 6.156. 13. In Greek myth, Enceladus is one of the giants (or Gigantes), sons of Gaia (Earth) who were conceived when Uranus (Heaven) is castrated, and his blood spills onto the earth. The giants revolt against Jupiter, who defeats them and buries them beneath volcanoes in Greece and Italy. See Metamorphoses 1.205–21. 14. The Cyclopes are one-eyed giants of Greek myth. In Homer’s Odyssey, they live on the island of Sicily tending sheep and goats (9.376–79). When Odysseus and twelve of his men arrive on the island and enter the cave of a Cyclops named Polyphemus, the latter kills and eats several of the men before Odysseus blinds him and is able to escape (9.380–630). See The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles, ed. Bernard Knox (New York: Penguin, 1996). In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas sees Polyphemus while sailing past the Cyclopes’ island; Achaemenides recounts the story of how Odysseus blinded Polyphemus and escaped from him. (3.711–86). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.359), the Cyclopes forge thunderbolts for Vulcan. 15. Alexander Molossus was an uncle of Alexander the Great from the Molossian tribe of Epirus, a region of northwest Greece. Alexander was king of Epirus ca. 350–331 BC. 16. Here, the author refers to Hercules (see note 12 above). A celebrated hero, his exploits are known as the Twelve Labors, a series of tasks that he carries out as penance for the crime of killing his sons. The first of these labors is to slay the Nemean lion, a ferocious

Translation Notes 267 monster with an impenetrable hide and fiercely sharp claws. Hercules strangles the monster and removes its hide, which he then wears as armor. The literary source for the Twelve Labors is Apollodorus’s Library, trans. Sir James George Frazer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921), 2.5.1. Hesiod also describes the Nemean lion in Theogony (325–35) and throughout The Shield of Heracles. All texts are available through the Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper. 17. Once ants, the Myrmidons are transformed into a human colony for Aeacus, son of Jupiter and Aegina, in order to repopulate the island of Aegina after a plague wipes out its inhabitants. See Metamorphoses 7.748–989. They become Achilles’s followers in the Trojan War, fighting against Priam, King of Troy (Illium). See also Aeneid 2.211–12. 18. In Virgil’s Aeneid (1.420–45), Dido’s brother, Pygmalion, kills her husband and uncle Sychaeus, the king of Tyre. Dido flees Tyre, founds the new city of Carthage and becomes its queen. Iarbas is a neighboring king who wished to marry Dido. She rejects him, as she loves Aeneas (4.1–67). 19. Virgil’s Aeneid (1.1–127) opens with a vengeful Juno asking Aeolus, King of the Winds, to unleash a storm that will ravage Aeneas’s fleet; Aeneas takes refuge off the coast of Carthage, where he then meets Dido (1.354–416). Thera (Santorini) is a volcanic island in the Aegean Sea. 20. In the original French, the author specifies that Cupid resides in the third heaven (tiers ciel). In 2 Corinthians, 12:2–4 (New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001]), St. Paul speaks of the third heaven: “I years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” In the notes to these verses, the editors comment that in mystical Judaism, the third heaven, i.e., Paradise, is a place where one is allowed to see the blessed; this was an ecstatic experience. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples translates the passage using the term tiers ciel: “Je connais un homme en Christ, qui devant quatorze ans a été ravi jusqu’au tiers ciel, soit en (son) corps, soit hors de (son) corps, je ne sais Dieu le sait. Et je connais que cet homme-là—soit en (son) corps, soit hors de (son) corps, je ne sais, Dieu le sait, a été ravi au paradis et a ouï (des) paroles secretes lesquelles il n’est point possible de dire” Le Nouveau Testament de Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples Nice 1525 (Nice: Serre Éditeur, 2005), 232. 21. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.628–783), Daphne, daughter of the river-god Peneus, is a huntress who rejects all of her suitors, including Apollo. Cupid instigates Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne by shooting him with an arrow. Daphne then begs Peneus to rescue her, and he turns her into a laurel tree.

268 Translation Notes 22. The Hesperides are the daughters of Night and Darkness who guard, with the dragon Ladon, a tree laden with golden apples in a garden in a far corner of the earth. See Metamorphoses 11.163–65. The eleventh labor of Hercules is to kill the dragon and return with the apples. 23. Daedalus is an ingenious, legendary artisan and inventor. Condemned to the island of Crete, he builds a labyrinth for King Minos, where he imprisons the Minotaur. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8.252–326), Daedalus is unable to escape the labyrinth by sea and creates wings so that he and his son Icarus may leave by air. He does not foresee the melting of his son’s wings made of wax, and Icarus falls into the sea and drowns. 24. Claude Longeon, “Du nouveau sur les Comptes amoureux de Madame Jeanne Flore,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 44.4 (1982): 605–13, suggests that Jean Andro is a direct reference to an acquaintance of Étienne Dolet, who, in Stephani Doleti Carminum liber primus (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe, 1533), includes an epitaph of Ioannis Andro adolscentis nobilissimi, presumably a law student in Toulouse. Furthermore, Longeon sees in the character of Pyralius a reference to Gratien du Pont de Drusac, the author of Controverses des sexes masculin et feminin (Toulouse: Coulomiés, 1534). The latter also was living in Toulouse around 1533, when Dolet wrote the epitaph, and shared certain physical features with Pyralius, both of them redheads with a ruddy complexion. Longeon states that Dolet had very little respect for Gratien du Pont. Dolet had been persecuted for heresy in Toulouse and associated du Pont with his persecutors (607). For Longeon, this unfavorable portrait would be a means of seeking vengeance against his nemesis (609). In his biography of Étienne Dolet, Richard Copley Christie further explains the nature of Dolet’s dispute with Gratien du Pont: In 1533, […] the Lieutenant-General of the Seneschalty [of Toulouse] was […] tenacious of his position […]. Unfortunately no one could be less fitted for its duties or more likely to bring it into discredit by his folly and vanity. The Sieur de Drusac’s great ambition was to shine, neither as an administrator nor as a judge, but as a poet. […] Embittered by the fair sex […] he endeavored to avenge himself by a bitter diatribe in verse against his persecutors, which he published under the title of Controverses des sexes masculin et féminin. […] Dolet had undertaken the defence of the fair sex against its detractor, and had thereby acquired some favour with the ladies of Toulouse, but the merciless ridicule which he poured upon both the man and his book accounts for, if it does not justify, the bitter hostility of the LieutenantGeneral of the Seneschalty. Six odes of Dolet are directed ‘in Drusacum vulgarem poetam Tholosanum qui librum in foeminas scripsit,’ In one of his odes Dolet says that Drusac’s book would be most useful to the grocers to wrap up pepper and such condiments in, and suggests other still more humiliating purposes for which it could be usefully employed. Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance 1508–1546 (London: Macmillan, 1899), 113–17.

Translation Notes 269 25. Bucephalus was Alexander the Great’s massive, black horse on which he fought many battles. According to legend, the horse was untamable until a young Alexander observed that the horse feared his own shadow. This knowledge allowed Alexander to soothe and tame Bucephalus. During the medieval period, the horse is mentioned in numerous versions of the Alexander romance, collections of the hero’s exploits written and recited in Latin (e.g., Walter of Châtillon’s twelfth-century Alexandreis) and in the vernacular (e.g., Alexandre de Paris’s twelfth-century Roman d’Alexandre). 26. The [B] gathering begins on this page of the original French edition. 27. The Five Cities of the plain, or Pentapolis, were Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboim. Four of the five cities were destroyed by fire. The episode is mentioned briefly in the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon 10:6–8: “Wisdom rescued a righteous man when the ungodly were perishing; he escaped the fire that descended on the Five Cities. Evidence of their wickedness still remains: a continually smoking wasteland, plants bearing fruit that does not ripen, and a pillar of salt standing as a monument to an unbelieving soul. For because they passed wisdom by, they not only were hindered from recognizing the good, but also left for humankind a reminder of their folly, so that their failures could never go unnoticed.” This passage refers to Lot’s experience, recounted in Genesis 19:1–29 (New Oxford Annotated Bible). 28. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (9.661–959), Byblis is a warning to girls against illicit love. Byblis falls in love with her twin brother, Caunus; he rejects her, and she pursues him, growing mad from grief and crying incessantly during her journey. Due to her constant flow of tears, she transforms into a fountain. 29. Venus falls in love with the exceptionally beautiful youth Adonis. Although she warns him to fear wild beasts, he dies while hunting a wild boar. See Metamorphoses 10.618–66 and 10.821–57. 30. Renaissance artists often depict Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, wearing a garland of flowers and carrying a torch. See, for example, Peter Paul Rubens’s The Proxy Marriage of Marie de Medici and Henri IV (1621–25). In this painting, found in the Musée du Louvre and reproduced in Appendix 3, Hymenaeus wears a crown of flowers, holds a burning torch, and carries the train of Marie de Medici’s gown. 31. In book four of Virgil’s Aeneid, the scorned king Iarbas (see note 18 above) hears of Dido’s love for Aeneas and appeals angrily to Jupiter, who commands Aeneas to leave Carthage. Dido pleads unsuccessfully to Aeneas that he stay. Unable to withstand his absence, Dido commits suicide. 32. Jupiter seduced Leda by appearing to her as a swan; Danaë, as a shower of gold; and Europa, as a ram. In Metamorphoses (6.145–61), Arachne illustrates Jupiter’s indiscretions in her tapestry.

270 Translation Notes 33. The gryphon is a fabulous beast with powerful wings, an eagle’s beak, and a lion’s body. Its fierce nature makes it an effective guardian of treasure for Apollo and of wine for Bacchus. As noted in Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jean Buchanan-Brown (New York: Penguin, 1994), s.v. “gryphon,” the hybrid nature of the gryphon made it an apt symbol in medieval allegory of the two natures of Christ: human and divine. The expression “to mate gryphons with mares” comes from Virgil’s Eclogues (8.26– 28): “[…] What can lovers not expect? / Now will gryphons mate with horses. In after time / the trembling fallow deer will come to drink.” Vergil’s Eclogues, trans. Barbara Hughes Fowler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 22. EBSCO e-book. The supposed offspring of this impossible union is the Hippogriff, which appears in canto IV Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (18.3–4). 34. Logres is the kingdom of King Arthur in the Matter of Britain, medieval literature treating the legend of King Arthur and other celebrated royals. 35. All of the men listed are Knights of the Round Table. 36. Paris Alexander, the son of King Priam and Hecuba, instigates the Trojan War by abducting Helen, daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, from her husband, Menelaus, king of Sparta. Paris’s father Priam and brother Hector both are killed in the Trojan War. Homer’s Iliad recounts these events. See The Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles, ed. Bernard Knox (New York: Penguin, 1990). 37. Pirithous is king of the Lapiths (a people of Thessaly), son of Jupiter and friend of Theseus. With Theseus, he descends into the Underworld in order to abduct and marry Proserpine (Persephone), the wife of Pluto (Hades). Pluto punishes the two by affixing them to stone, making them immobile. Theseus’s friend Hercules rescues him (while accomplishing his twelfth labor), but Pirithous remains forever in the Underworld. The author may be confusing or conflating the stories of Pirithous and Orpheus here, both of whom descend to the Underworld in order to bring back a woman. However, Orpheus is motivated by love for his dear, deceased wife, Eurydice. Pirithous is emboldened by his prowess in battle and his heritage as a son of a god. He targets Proserpine in order to prove his courage and daring nature. Plutarch (ca. AD 45–120) describes the episode in The Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans, a collection of biographies of notable Greek and Roman historical characters. A sixteenth-century manuscript containing a French translation of Plutarch’s lives of Theseus and of Romulus is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Anc. 7510–2 Français 1396). Among other manuscripts containing French translations of Plutarch are lives of Hannibal, Scipio, and Pompey, presumably translated by Simon Bourgouyn. On Bourgouyn’s French translations in print and in manuscript, see James P. Carley and Myra D. Orth, “ ‘Plus que assez’: Simon Bourgouyn and His French Translations from Plutarch, Petrarch and Lucian,” Viator 34, no. 11 (2003): 328–63.

Translation Notes 271 38. Here, Cupid seems to refer to the story of Pirithous or of Orpheus, which the storyteller has just mentioned. See note 37 above. 39. Dwarves often frequent medieval romance, including Chrétien de Troyes (e.g., Erec et Enide and Lancelot), and their roles can vary greatly. Here, Andro’s dwarf companion is a benevolent assistant, though in Chrétien, dwarves tend to be more malicious. Chevalier and Gheerbrant note in the Dictionary of Symbols, s.v. “dwarf ”: Their freedom of speech and gesture in the company of kings, ladies and grandees personify the uncontrolled outbursts of the unconscious. Dwarfs were regarded as irresponsible and invulnerable, but were heard with a smile as though they were not quite of this world. The smile might sometimes be a trifle forced, since dwarfs never minced their words but spoke the naked truth. Their image was then somewhat akin to that of the fool or the buffoon. However, with a full share of the mischievousness of the unconscious went a logic beyond the bounds of reason, and they were endowed with all the strength of instinct and intuition. Their small size enabled them to overhear the most closely guarded secrets and they became creatures of mystery. 40. After rescuing Andromeda (daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia) from the sea monster, Perseus marries her and then kills her uncle Phineus by wielding the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa, turning Phineus into stone. Andromeda had been betrothed to Phineus prior to her rescue. Ovid recounts the episodes in his Metamorphoses (4.908–5.361). 41. As god of the sky, Jupiter was associated with both thunder and lightning. One of his epithets was Jupiter Tonnans (Thundering Jupiter). Jupiter’s Greek counterpart, Zeus, resided on Mount Olympus as one of the Twelve Olympians, the principle gods of Greece. The author often uses Greek and Roman mythology interchangeably. 42. Colchis is not an island, but rather a kingdom on the Black Sea coast that was ruled by Aeëtes. Jason and the Argonauts go to Colchis in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, guarded by a dragon that never sleeps. King Aeëtes promises to grant Jason the fleece if he can accomplish three seemingly impossible tasks. The king’s daughter, Medea, falls in love with Jason and uses her magical powers to assist him with these tasks, which include conquering the sleepless dragon. See Metamorphoses 7.1–226. Perseus slew the sea monster Cetus, who was poised to attack Andromeda. The Nereids had chained her to a rock by the sea as punishment for her mother’s prideful boasting that Andromeda’s beauty rivaled that of the Nereids. See note 40 above. Francesco Colonna cites both Perseus and Jason and their fight to rescue the woman in chapter 13 of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1499), several copies are located at the Library of Congress (Incun. 1499 .C6), of which one has been digitized, http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/colhyp/index.html. See The Strife of Love in a Dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999), 153–57. A modern edition of Jacques Kerver’s 1546 French translation also is available, Le Songe de Poliphile,

272 Translation Notes ed. Gilles Polizzi (Paris: Imprimerie nationale Éditions, 1994), 151–53. The original French edition of this book is available in the University of Virginia Special Collections Library (Gordon 1546. C65) and has been digitized for the online exhibit, The Renaissance in Print. http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/digitalcuration/portfolio/gordon/index.html. 43. Venus’s husband, Vulcan, is the son of Jupiter and Juno and the god of fire and smithery. 44. Although the author here calls him a silversmith, Pygmalion is a skilled sculptor from Cyprus who creates an ivory statue of a woman so lifelike that he falls in love with her. In the Metamorphoses (10.312–71), Pygmalion makes offerings to Venus on her feast day, asking that his statue be transformed into a living woman. Venus grants his wish. 45. The three Graces are daughters of Jupiter who embody the ideal of beauty. They often accompany Venus and Cupid. 46. Voluptas is the daughter of Cupid and Psyche, thus Venus’s granddaughter. 47. The Roman tradition of Venus grew from that of the ancient Italian goddess of beauty and charm, who was associated with gardens and fertility. 48. Python is a dragon or serpent that guards the Delphic Oracle. The site originally was believed to be the center of the earth, represented by a stone called the omphalos (navel), over which Earth presided. In Metamorphoses (1.607–27), Apollo slays the dragon, claims the oracle, and establishes the Pythian festival, sacred games to celebrate his victory. 49. Priam’s chief shepherd raised Paris Alexander on Mount Ida. While pregnant with Paris, his mother dreamed of giving birth to a flaming torch. A seer interpreted her dream, suggesting that her son would cause the destruction of Troy. In order to prevent this future occurrence, Priam asked his chief shepherd to take the infant Paris away and kill him; instead, he rescued him. 50. The original French uses the adjective vénérien, i.e., of Venus. Although my translation of venerable retains the reverence given to Venus’s entourage, it loses this association. 51. Argo is the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed. 52. See note 16 on the Nemean lion, the first of Hercules’s Twelve Labors. 53. A quintal was a unit of mass equivalent to one hundred pounds. Thus, in this passage, Hercules impressively carries a club weighing one thousand pounds around his neck. 54. The humility that Andro displays before Venus parallels that of Rosemonde. 55. Plato investigates the relationship between beauty and love in his Phaedrus, a dialogue in which Socrates explains to Phaedrus: “When irrational desire, pursuing the enjoyment

Translation Notes 273 of beauty, has gained the mastery over judgment that prompts to right conduct, and has acquired from other desires, akin to it, fresh strength to strain toward bodily beauty, that very strength provides it with its name—it is the strong passion called love” (238b7–238c4). See “Phaedrus,” in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, trans. R. Hackford (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 475–525. 56. Although the author indicates that Orpheus was known for his lute playing, an important instrument in Renaissance music, it was his lyre playing that earned the Greek musician renown. With his music, Orpheus enchanted both men and gods, including Proserpine, who allowed him to attempt to rescue his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld; he charmed wild animals and animated nature, even rocks. See also note 37 above. 57. The author is perhaps mistaking King Acrisius for King Phineus, Adromeda’s uncle to whom she had been betrothed prior to her marriage to Perseus (see note 40 above). Perseus accidentally kills Acrisius by throwing a discus while participating in games, not by displaying the Gorgon’s head. 58. Similarly, Medea anoints Jason with a magical unguent in order to assist him in his quest for the Golden Fleece. On Medea and Jason, see Metamorphoses 7.1–226. 59. Hercules (see also note 12) was not a god, but rather a celebrated hero. Although Pérouse comments on this mistake as evidence that the author had only a superficial understanding of mythology, I suggest that this may simply be an effort to achieve stylistic symmetry, for in the following paragraph the author assigns the title of god to Apollo, but not to Hercules. See Contes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore, ed. Gabriel-André Pérouse (Lyon: CNRS, 1980), p. 118, n. 76. 60. Cerberus is the monstrous dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld. The twelfth and final labor of Hercules is to descend to the Underworld, capture Cerberus, bring the dog to king Eurystheus and then return it to the Underworld. In Virgil’s Aeneid (6.450–55), Charon laments having been made to transport Hercules. See also note 37 above. 61. Briareos and his two brothers are sons of Uranus and Gaia (Heaven and Earth), each of whom has one hundred arms. 62. In the original French, the C gathering begins here on page 17r. 63. Alcides is another name given to Hercules, meaning son of Alcaeus. The latter was his grandfather. During his descent to the Underworld for his twelfth labor, Hercules encounters Pluto (Hades). See note 37 above. 64. The Cyclopes work in Vulcan’s forge. See note 14 above.

274 Translation Notes 65. The ancient region of Hyrcania was located at the southern end of the Caspian Sea and was known for its tigers, rather than lions. See, for example, Virgil’s Aeneid (4.365–67), where Dido derides Aeneas, suggesting that he was suckled by Hyrcanian tigresses. 66. On Hercules rescuing Theseus in the Underworld, see note 37 above. Demeter (Ceres in Roman myth) is the goddess of agriculture, associated with grain, and mother of Prosperine, Pluto’s wife. 67. The giants Otus and Ephialtes place Mount Pelion on top of Mount Ossa in an attempt to reach the heavens and overthrow the gods, but Jupiter destroys them. See note 13 above. 68. Hercules is the son of Alcmena and Jupiter. See note 12 above. 69. On the python, see note 48 above. 70. On gryphons, see note 33 above. 71. On Persephone (Proserpine), see note 37 above. 72. The peacock is sacred to Jupiter’s wife Juno. She had given Argus, a herdsman with eyes all over his body, the duty to watch Io because she had captured Jupiter’s attention. Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus, and after his death Juno places his eyes on the peacock’s tail feathers. See Metamorphoses 1.833–1014. 73. Apollo also was known as the sun god. Here, the author is referring to Tethys, the sea goddess and wife of Oceanus, the origin of all rivers. As Pérouse notes (Contes amoureux, n. 95, p. 122), as the sun (Apollo) sets in the evening, it thus plunges into the depths of the sea (Tethys). 74. The French specifies taffetas armoisi, which was a very fine type of silken taffeta produced in Italy. See the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, s.v. “armoisin” and “taffetas.” University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey. http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. Lyon also was known for its silk trade. 75. Zephyrus is the god of the west wind. See Metamorphoses 1.87–88. See also Clément Marot’s Le Temple de Cupido, which begins with a reference to Zephyrus: “Sur le printemps, que la belle Flora / Les champs couvers de diverse flour a, / Et son amy Zephyrus les esvent, / Quand doulcement en l’air souspire, & vente […]” in Œuvres poétiques, ed. Gérard Defaux (Paris: Dunod, 1996), 1:27. 76. Liber Pater was a Roman god of wine and fertility, associated with Bacchus and the Greek Dionysus. Ceres was his consort (see note 66 above).

Translation Notes 275 77. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (6.8–208), Arachne is a weaver who challenges the goddess Minerva to a weaving contest. Arachne’s choice of subject matter (the loves and transgressions of the gods) offends Minerva, who destroys the tapestry and turns Arachne into a spider. 78. Pasiphaë is the wife of King Minos of Crete, whose children are Ariadne and Phaedre. Her adulterous affair with a bull results in the Minotaur (a hybrid beast that is both man and bull). Minos encloses the Minotaur in a labyrinth in order to conceal the scandal. See Metamorphoses 8.177–215. 79. In the Metamorphoses, Ariadne falls in love with Theseus, who had come to Crete to kill the Minotaur. Although she helps him escape the labyrinth, he abandons her (8.238–51). Phaedre marries Theseus, but falls in love with his son, Hippolytus. Although he rejects her, Theseus banishes and curses his son, causing his death (15.564–617). 80. On Adonis, see note 29 above. 81. Here, the author seems to be confusing Cupid with Zeus (Jupiter), who asked Apollo to found the Pythian Games in order to expiate his crime of killing the python. On the python, see note 48 above. 82. Leda’s daughter is Helen of Troy. See note 36 above. 83. Marcus Gavius Apicius was a Roman lover of fine food and luxury who lived in the first century AD. A fifth century book of cookery in Vulgar Latin was named for him, Apicius. See Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and an English Translation of the Latin Recipe Text, ed. and trans. Sally Grainger and C. W. Grocock (Totnes: Prospect, 2006). 84. Frederic Baumgartner explains the French monetary system in France in the Sixteenth Century “The gold coin in use—the écu au soleil—had become the sole gold coin minted in France by 1484. Its value was expressed in terms of units of monnaie tournois, a money of account originally from Tours, consisting of livre tournois (l), sol (s), and denier (d). There were 20 s to the livre, and 12 d to the sol, or 240 d to the livre […]” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), ix. He indicates that between 1533 and 1550, 1 écu = 2 l, 5 s, or 45 sous. Pérouse suggests (p. 124, n. 112) that the sum could have bought 250 fine cows. 85. According to the Dictionary of Symbols, s.v. “lamp,” lamps often represent the real presence of God, and the Christian practice of lighting candles in the sanctuary “symbolizes the flame of sacrifice, love and the divine presence.” A flame, see also Tale Two below, “is a symbol of spiritual purification, enlightenment and love. It is the image of the spirit and of transcendence.” 86. Phidias was a highly praised Greek sculptor of the fifth century BC.

276 Translation Notes 87. Saturn’s son is Jupiter. 88. On Danaë, see note 32 above. 89. On Leda, see note 32 above. On Alcmena (Amphitryon’s wife), see note 12. 90. In the Greek tradition, Zeus grants Tithonus immortality, but not eternal youth. He grows old and withered. See also Metamorphoses 9.615–16. 91. The Elysian Fields, or Elysium, is a happy afterlife where the gods send chosen ones to live after death, a counterpoint to the Underworld. 92. In Metamorphoses (1.222–335), Lycaon tests Jupiter by serving him human flesh. Jupiter retaliates by burning Lycaon’s home and turning him into a wolf. 93. The Furies emerged from the blood spilled when the Titan Cronos castrated his father. Virgil, in his Aeneid (6.571–72) and Dante, in the early fourteenth-century The Divine Comedy, ed. Barry Moser, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), “Inferno,” 9.34–54, identify three Furies: Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. They often appear to punish the unfaithful or those who have committed perjury. 94. This is the only mention of Madame Agripine in the Comptes amoureux. She is not one of the storytellers, nor is she mentioned in the opening epistle. 95. Although Jeanne Flore does not attribute this poem to him, it was written by Clément Marot and was circulating around 1542. See the manuscript edition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rothschild Supplement 2319, and the imprint, La Fleur de poesie françoyse (Paris: Alain Lotrian, 1543). In this and in subsequent editions, Marot replaces “encor naistre” of the penultimate line with “deux fois naistre.” Defaux suggests in Œuvres poétiques, 2:1119, n. 3, that this mention of rebirth references Renée (re-née) de France, wife of Ercole II d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara and sister of Queen Claude de France. Renée was sympathetic to religious dissidents and hosted a number of reformers at her court in Ferrara, including Clément Marot and Jean Calvin. Defaux also notes that Marot juxtaposes folle amour with Ferme Amour, lamenting that he did not better serve the latter in his youth. Another change in subsequent publications of this poem is the addition of “et” (and) to the third line: “Mon beau printemps, et mon Esté.”

Tale Two 1. In the original French edition, the D gathering begins on this page. This tale appears first in the Pugnition, and is one of the four tales (the second, third, fourth, and fifth in the Comptes amoureux) that Pérouse considers as the noyau (core) of the collection. See the introduction to this volume, page 6–7.

Translation Notes 277 2. There is, indeed, a village of Mison in the present-day region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur of southeastern France. The village was chartered in 1360, dates back to 988, and the ruins of a tenth-century feudal castle overlook the Buëch Valley. Pérouse suggests that the name of Mison is fictional, perhaps inspired by the Greek for “hate” (misos) in order to allude to the main character’s cruelty. Similarly, the name could be a transposition of the name Minos, a king of Crete who became a judge of the dead in the Underworld. Or perhaps a more sinister version of Lyon, the city in which the Comptes amoureux was published, by replacing the first syllable of the city’s name with the first syllable of the Greek misos. 3. The Temple of Jupiter was built on the summit of the Capitoline Hill in Rome and was of great political and religious importance. 4. The Roman Forum was the heart of public life in ancient Rome and the location of numerous temples, palaces, and government buildings. Marcus Portius Cato (Cato the Elder) was a formidable statesman responsible for the construction of important edifices and infrastructure in Rome during the 2nd century BC. Xenocrates was a Greek Platonist philosopher, and Phryne was a notoriously beautiful and wealthy Greek courtesan, both of the 4th century BC. 5. Phaëton, son of Clymene, sought confirmation that his father truly was the sun god. To banish his doubt, his father grants him permission to drive his sun chariot for a day, but Phaëton is unable to control it. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.1038–2.453), the rogue chariot causes great damage to the earth, creating deserts, drying up lakes, and burning cities, so that Jupiter intervenes by striking down the chariot with his lightning bolts. 6. On the three Graces, see Tale One, note 45. 7. Here, the author refers to the Judgment of Paris. While still a shepherd on Mount Ida, during the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite (Juno, Minerva, and Venus in the Roman tradition) request his assistance in determining which goddess is the most beautiful. Each offers him a different recompense for the title. Hera offers greatness; Athena, military success; Aphrodite, the hand of the most beautiful woman. After choosing Aphrodite, the goddess helps Paris to abduct Helen of Troy. 8. After killing Medusa, Perseus rescues Andromeda and later uses Medusa’s head to kill Phineus (see Tale One, note 40). Andromeda had been betrothed to Phineus prior to her rescue. 9. Harpalyce is the daughter of the Thracian King Harpalycus. Her father trained her to be a fierce fighter with the intention of grooming her for the throne. She is an aggressive fighter. See Aeneid 1.380–88. 10. Galatea, whose name refers to her milky-white complexion, is the daughter of Nereus and the sea-goddess Doris. The Cyclops Polyphemus falls in love with her, but Galatea al-

278 Translation Notes ready loved Acis. Polyphemus kills Acis on seeing the lovers together. See Metamorphoses 13.1070–307. 11. Lais, along with Phryne (see Tale Two, note 4), was a professional courtesan of ancient Greece. Women belonging to this class were celebrated for their beauty and intellect and often were employed as entertainers for social gatherings. 12. In Greek mythology, the Sirens were female creatures that inhabit an island and are capable of seducing men with their song. In Homer’s Odyssey (12.40–60), Odysseus is able to escape their threat by binding himself to the mast of his ship as it passes their island. 13. Here, the author refers to Cleopatra (69–30 BC), queen of Egypt during the Ptolemaic dynasty, and a legendary cultural figure due both to her beauty and political dominance. She was romantically associated with Julius Caesar and claimed to have born him a son, Caesarion, who would become the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty. During the Roman civil war that followed Caesar’s assassination of 44 BC, Cleopatra aligned herself with the Second Triumvirate, made up of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Although Mark Antony was married to Octavian’s sister, he became publicly associated with Cleopatra following their first meeting in 41 BC. Octavian viewed their relationship as a threat, and Rome declared war on Cleopatra in 32 BC. Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in Greece. Unable to establish peace with Octavian and after surrendering Alexandria, Antony committed suicide, soon followed by Cleopatra. Plutarch discusses their relationship in his Parallel Lives. See “Antony” in Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Roman Lives, trans. Robin Waterfield and ed. Philip A. Stadter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 360–430. 14. Thespis, of the 6th century BC, generally is credited with becoming the first stage actor to play a character other than himself, thereby inventing the dramatic genre of tragedy. Horace refers to him briefly in Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 276–78. The adjective “thespian” is derived from his name. On Orpheus, see Tale One, notes 37 and 56. 15. King Peleus, whose name refers to Mount Pelion, was given the goddess Thetis by Zeus (Jupiter). Although the latter was in love with Thetis, he had been told that her future son would become more powerful than his father. He thus chose to give her to the mortal Peleus so that her son also would be a mortal. Achilles was the child of Peleus and Thetis. On the Judgment of Paris, see Tale Two, note 7. 16. Juno’s bird is the peacock, an image often used in emblem books to evoke excessive pride. See, for example, La Délie, object de plus haulte étude, by Maurice Scève, a poetry cycle in which the poet reflects on his love for an exalted woman (Lyon: Sulpice Sabon, 1544). An emblem of a peacock accompanied by the device “qui bien se veoit, orgueil abaisse,” (pride

Translation Notes 279 lessens when one truly examines oneself), precedes dizain 303. See Gérard Defaux’s edition, Délie: object de plus haulte vertu (Geneva: Droz, 2004), 139. 17. In Book 1 of Virgil’s Aeneid (1.379–497), Venus appears to her son Aeneas after his ship crashes onto the coast at Carthage. There, Venus disguises herself as a young girl and arranges for Dido, founder and queen of Carthage, to fall in love with her son. On Dido, see also Tale One, notes 18 and 31. 18. William Watson explains in Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World that after François Ier lost lands in Spain and Italy to the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, he began in 1535 to pursue a rival alliance with the Ottoman sultan Sulayman the Magnificent (also seen as Soliman, Suleïman, Suleyman). Their agreements, or “capitulations,” allowed for a French presence in Istanbul, facilitated merchants’ travel between France and the Ottoman Empire and created a military alliance against Charles V. In 1534, Turkish ships arrived in southern France at the request of François Ier. For a short time in 1543, Turkish troops under the pirate “Barbarossa” occupied the coastal town of Toulon (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 10–11. This passage also appears in the abbreviated edition of Jeanne Flore’s work, La Pugnition de l’Amour contempné, dated 1540. The author may refer to the 1534 arrival of Turkish ambassadors, since the occupation at Toulon had not yet occurred at the time of printing. 19. Here again the author confuses Greek and Roman mythology. In the Roman tradition, Mars was the god of war and second in importance only to Jupiter. Aeneas was born of his love affair with Venus. In the Greek tradition, Adonis was a beautiful youth with whom Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus) fell in love. Ganymede was a young Trojan hero whose great beauty attracted Zeus (Jupiter, in the Roman tradition). The latter carried Ganymede up to Olympus where he became Zeus’s cupbearer. In Apuleius’s Metamorphoses/The Golden Ass, trans. Sarah Ruden (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 4.28–5.25, Psyche is a beautiful girl with whom Cupid falls in love. Venus imposes many trials on her, and it is only after her death that Jupiter permits that she and Cupid marry in heaven. 20. The original French hacquenée was, according to Greimas (s.v. “hacquenée), a docile, ambling horse often ridden by women. In the absence of a suitable equivalent, I use the English Hackney. Although the English term could well have derived from the old French, the first Hackney horses, a breed of impressive trotting stallions, originated in England in the eighteenth century. 21. On Paris’s abduction of Helen, see Tale One, note 36. 22. For more on the Judgment of Paris, see Tale Two, note 7. 23. On false love, or folle amour, see the introduction to this volume, pages 28–29.

280 Translation Notes 24. Cythera is the Greek island on which, in some accounts, Venus landed after being born of sea-foam. Again, the author refers to Helen, Paris (the son of Priam), and the Trojan War. 25. The author is perhaps mistaking King Acrisius for King Phineus, Adromeda’s uncle to whom she had been betrothed prior to her marriage to Perseus. See also Tale One, notes 40 and 57. 26. The basilisk (often referred to as synonymous with the cockatrice) is a fabulous, hybrid creature that is part bird (usually rooster) and part dragon or lizard. Its gaze was believed to be fatal, thus placing a mirror before a basilisk was a supposedly effective means of killing the creature. Its magical properties are quite similar to those of the Gorgon Medusa, and the storyteller calls on both images in this tale. Maurice Scève also uses the basilisk and Medusa motif in his Délie. See, for example, dizain 186 and the preceding emblem (a basilisk gazing in a mirror) and device “Mon regard par toy me tue” (my own gaze kills me by looking at you). Délie, 87. See also Laurence Breiner, “The Career of the Cockatrice,” Isis 70.1 (1979): 30–47 and Sergei Lobanov-Rotovsky, “Taming the Basilisk” in The Body in Parts, ed. David A. Hillman and Carla Mazzio (New York: Routledge, 1997), 195–217. 27. Venus is associated with the myrtle tree. Virgil writes in his Eclogues (7.61–64): “Alcides loves the poplar most, Bacchus the vine, / lovely Venus the myrtle, and Phoebus his laurel tree. / Phyllis loves the hazel trees, while she loves them, / myrtle will not surpass the hazel nor Phoebus’s bay.” See Vergil’s Eclogues, trans. Fowler, 20. 28. The nymph Daphne is the daughter of the river-god Peneus. While romantically pursued by Apollo, she entreats her father to rescue her. Peneus transforms Daphne into a laurel tree, which Apollo then claims as his emblem. See Metamorphoses 1.628–783. 29. Bacchus (also known as Liber) is the god of wine and ecstasy, thus often present at such celebrations. He is frequently draped in tendrils of ivy. An evergreen plant, ivy symbolizes longevity and unrelenting desire. Bacchus relies on the intoxicating effect of both vines (grapes and ivy) to seduce women. See Dictionary of Symbols, s.v. “ivy.” 30. Hyrcania was the Greek name, calqued on the Old Persian Varkana (Wolf’s Land) given to a territory bordering the Caspian Sea in what is now northern Iran and Turkmenistan. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s. v. “Hyrcania.” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/280179/Hyrcania. Virgil refers to the ferocity of Hyrcanian tigers in his Aeneid (4.459). Actaeon, a skilled hunter, is devoured by his own hunting dogs. As punishment for seeing her bathing in the woods, Diana transforms Actaeon into a stag so that his dogs would unknowingly pursue and kill their master. See Metamorphoses 3.163–317. 31. On the basilisk, see note 26 above.

Translation Notes 281 32. François Ier used the salamander as a heraldic device. Anne-Marie Lecoq explains that the salamander was believed to be able to withstand fire and, in fact, to find nourishment in and have the capacity to extinguish fire. It was an ideal representation of both personal and moral integrity. For the Dauphin’s royal entrance to the city of Lyon in 1532, a large triumphal arch emblazoned with a salamander was raised before the entrance to the cloister of the St. Jean cathedral. See “La Salamandre royale dans les entrées royales de François Ier,” Les fêtes de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot and Elie Koningson (Paris: CNRS, 1975), 95–104. See also her François 1er imaginaire: symbolique et politique à l’aube de la Renaissance française (Paris: Macula, 1987). 33. In the original French edition, the E gathering begins here, on page 33r. 34. In Greek mythology, Styx is one of the rivers of the Underworld, which the souls of the dead had to cross. The gods and goddesses often swear oaths on the Styx. See, for example, Homer’s Odyssey (5.205). 35. Croesus was the last king of Lydia (ca. 560–546 BC) and known for his great wealth. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) recounts the story of Croesus in the first book of his History. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s. v. “Herodotus.” http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/263507/Herodotus. Herodotus also refers to King Midas in the first book of his History as having sent an offering to Delphi. Midas was famously granted his greatest wish by Bacchus: to turn all that he touched to gold. See Metamorphoses 11.118–270. 36. In Greek myth, Tereus, king of Thrace, was married to Procne, but fell in love with her sister, Philomela. After raping Philomela, he severed her tongue so that she could not tell of his misdeed. She told her sister of Tereus’s cruelty by weaving a tapestry. Procne then killed their son, Itys, and had Tereus unknowingly consume his flesh. Once he understood, Tereus attempted to slay Procne and Philomela, but all transformed into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe, Philomela into a swallow, and Procne into a nightingale. See Metamorphoses 6.590–977. See also Michèle Biraud and Evrard Delbey, “Philomèla: Du mythe aitiologique au début du mythe littéraire,” Rursus: poiétique, réception et réécriture des textes antiques 1 (July 9, 2006): http://rursus.revues.org/45. 37. The daughter of the Sun was Pasiphaë. Her husband, King Minos of Crete, refused to sacrifice to Poseidon, who in turn punished Minos by giving Pasiphaë an irrepressible desire for the bull. That desire later would result in the Minotaur. See Metamorphoses 8.183–85. 38. In the Metamorphoses (1.89–90), Boreas is the north wind. 39. According to the Dictionary of Symbols, s.v. “oak,” the oak tree was associated with sky-gods in Greek and Roman mythology due to its ability to attract lightning. Oaks were

282 Translation Notes offered to Zeus and to Jupiter. Oaks also were associated with physical strength and endurance; Heracles/Hercules carried a club made of oak. 40. On the peacock, see Tale One, note 72 and Tale Two, note 16. 41. Again, the author refers to the legendary ferocity of Hyrcanian wildlife. See also Tale One, note 65. 42. The river Lethe, or the River of Oblivion, was a river of the Underworld; the dead would drink from this river in order to forget the troubles of their earthly life. 43. Again, the storyteller imagines Meridienne as a basilisk. 44. Idalium is an ancient city on the island of Cyprus; it became a center for cultic worship of Venus. 45. Here, the author refers to a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid (2.206–28) in which Sinon attempts to deceive the Trojans into bringing a wooden horse within their city’s walls. Sinon convinced them that the Trojan Horse would serve as a protective omen for the city, a replacement for the stolen Palladium. The Palladium, a small statue of Pallas Athena (Minerva) housed within a sacred shrine, had been stolen by Diomedes and Odysseus. The statue was believed to safeguard Troy from attack, thus its absence left the city vulnerable. Pallas Athena retaliated against the captors by animating the statue, inciting fear. Although Pérouse notes in his edition (p. 151, n. 171) that the details of Jeanne Flore’s reference are not entirely correct (the goddess’s ire was directed against the Greeks, not the Trojans), the passage suggests a parallel between Meridienne’s actions and those of the Palladium’s captors: both violated the sanctity of a goddess by disrespecting the values that their statues represent. 46. Enceladus belonged to a race of giants punished by Zeus (Jupiter). See Tale One, note 13. 47. A déploration is a genre of poetry that was practiced by late fifteenth- and early sixteenthcentury French Rhétoriqueurs poets. In a déploration, the poet laments the death of a noted figure, soliciting the reader’s sympathy with an elegiac tone, e.g., Clément Marot’s Déploration sur le trespas de feu messire Florymond Robertet (Lyon: Claude Nourry, 1527). See Gérard Gros and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Les formes poétiques du Moyen Age à la Renaissance (Paris: Nathan, 1995). 48. Pliny the Elder refers to this anecdote in his Natural History (Historia Naturalis): When Alexander the Great was on his Indian expedition, he was presented by the king of Albania with a dog of unusual size; being greatly delighted with its noble appearance, he ordered bears, and after them wild boars, and then deer, to be let loose before it; but the dog lay down, and regarded them

Translation Notes 283 with a kind of immoveable contempt. The noble spirit of the general became irritated by the sluggishness thus manifested by an animal of such vast bulk, and he ordered it to be killed. The report of this reached the king, who accordingly sent another dog, and at the same time sent word that its powers were to be tried, not upon small animals, but upon the lion or the elephant; adding, that he had had originally but two, and that if this one were put to death, the race would be extinct. Alexander, without delay, procured a lion, which in his presence was instantly torn to pieces. He then ordered an elephant to be brought, and never was he more delighted with any spectacle; for the dog, bristling up its hair all over the body, began by thundering forth a loud barking, and then attacked the animal, leaping at it first on one side and then on the other, attacking it in the most skilful manner, and then again retreating at the opportune moment, until at last the elephant, being rendered quite giddy by turning round and round, fell to the earth, and made it quite reecho with his fall. Pliny the Elder. The Natural History, ed. John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London: Taylor and Francis, 1855), 8.61. Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=urn:cts:latin-Lit:phi0978.phi001.perseus-eng1:1.dedication. 49. Charon is responsible for transporting the souls of the dead into the Underworld. Virgil describes Charon in his Aeneid (6.340–47). On Cerberus, see Tale One, note 60. 50. The blind mistrel is, of course, Homer. In his Iliad (16.938–50), Euphorbus is a young, but skilled Trojan warrior who gravely wounds Patroclus with his spear. Hector then ensures that Patroclus dies from the injury. 51. On gryphons, see Tale One, note 33. On Harpies, see Tale One, note 6. 52. Oceanus is the personification of the ocean, a vast river that encircles the Earth and into which all rivers flow. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1.6–7 and 2.702–6.

Tale Three 1. This tale appears second in the Pugnition. In the original French edition, the F gathering begins here, on page 41r. 2. Hortensia was a Roman heroine of the first century BC. The daughter of Roman orator Quintus Hortensius, she became known for her own oratorical skills by delivering a speech in the Roman Forum against a tax on wealthy women without appropriate representation. The triumvirs (see Tale Two, note 13) had proposed this tax to help fund a war against Julius Caesar’s assassins, but altered the proposal following Hortensia’s oration. Sappho was a sixth century BC lyric love poet from the island of Lesbos (now a part of Greece). At the time Jeanne Flore’s work was published, Sappho was known primarily via Ovid’s Heroides,

284 Translation Notes as her poetry would not be published in French until 1546. On Sappho, see Joan DeJean, Fictions of Sappho 1546–1937 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). Orpheus was renowned for his singing and for playing the lyre. On Orpheus, see also Tale One, notes 37 and 56. On the Sirens, see Tale Two, note 12. Hebe is the daughter of Jupiter and Juno and the wife of Hercules. She is a servant to the gods and known for her agile dancing. 3. On Arachne, see Tale One, note 77. 4. In the Greek tradition, Plutus is the personification of wealth, often depicted as blind, thus unable to discriminate in the distribution of wealth. He is the subject of Aristophanes’s eponymous comedy. 5. On Lais, see Tale Two, note 11. 6. Erasistratus was a renowned physician and anatomist of the third century BC. He famously saved the life of Antiochus, a king of the Seleucid Empire. Pliny the Elder refers to this incident in The Natural History, which Bostock and Riley, chap. 37, n. 3, elaborate: The story to which Pliny is supposed here to refer is a curious one. Antiochus, the son of Seleucus Nicator, fell in love with Stratonice, whom his father had married in his old age, but struggled to conceal his passion. The skilful physician discovered the nature of his disease; upon which he reported to Seleucus that it was incurable, for that he was in love, and it was impossible that his passion could be gratified. The king, greatly surprised, inquired who the lady was; to which Erasistratus replied that it was his own wife; whereupon Seleucus began to try and persuade him to give her up to his son. The physician upon this asked him if he would do so himself, if it were his own wife. Seleucus declared that he would; upon which Erasistratus disclosed to him the truth. Seleucus not only gave up Stratonice to his son, but resigned to him several provinces. Erasistratus was one of the most famous physicians and anatomists of antiquity. 7. The abstract idea of avarice, or greed, is personified in the thirteenth-century Roman de la rose. Gilles Corrozet also excoriates avarice in the poem “Contre les avaricieulx” in his Hécatomgraphie: “Avarice decoipt son maistre, / Ainsi qu’on dict vulgairement, / Qui de son bien veult content estre, / Il vit bien plus heureusement” (Paris: Denys Janot, 1540), k3v. This edition is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of rare books (Rés Z-2598) and has been digitized. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30274118g. 8. Hymenaeus is the god of marriage and personifies the wedding procession. See Metamorphoses 6.612–19 and Tale One, note 30, above. 9. On Vulcan, see Tale One, note 43.

Translation Notes 285 10. Egeria is a water nymph and wife of Numa. In the Metamorphoses (15.557–650), she grieves the death of her husband so loudly that she disrupts worship of the goddess Diana. Hippolytus chides her for wallowing in her sorrows, and the goddess Phoebe then transforms her into a fountain, her limbs becoming eternal streams. 11. Iphis is a shepherd who falls in love with Anaxarete. After she rejects him, he kills himself and Venus turns Anaxarete to stone. See Metamorphoses 14.1014–111. 12. Castalia is a nymph pursued by Apollo who throws herself into a spring near the oracle at Delphi in order to escape him. 13. The sea-god Phorcys had three daughters with Ceto, known as the Gorgons. Of the three, Medusa is the only mortal and also the most infamous, for her gaze could turn others into stone. Perseus slays her by viewing her image reflected on his shield. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4.1083–94), Perseus explains that Medusa once was a beautiful woman, her hair the most admired feature. Her beauty attracted the love of Neptune, who raped her in Minerva’s temple. Minerva then punished Medusa by transforming her hair into horrifying serpents.

Tale Four 1. This tale is the third to appear in the Pugnition. 2. The original French, “ce n’est pas […] de maintenant […],” is strikingly similar to a passage in the final chapter of Rabelais’s Gargantua, in a version considered to be the first edition of the work, though the title page is missing: “La lecture ce cestuy monument parachevee Gargantua soupira profondément, et dict es assistans. Ce n’est pas de maintenant que les gents reduictz a la creance evangelicque sont persecutez. Mais bienheureux est celluy qui ne sera scandalize, et qui tousjours tendra au but : au blanc que dieu par son cher enfant nous a prefix, sans par ses affections charnelles estre distraict ny diverty,” La Vie inestimable du Grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel, jadis composée par l’abstracteur de quinte essence (s.l., s.n., s.d.), N4v. This edition is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of rare books (Rés. Y2-2126) and has been digitized. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb311673771. 3. According to Defaux, this rondeau, “D’une jeune dame, qui a vieil mary,” was written by Clément Marot prior to 1527 and was first published in L’Adolescence clémentine (Paris: Geofroy Tory, 1532). This edition is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Rés. Ye-1532) and has been digitized. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k70121n. See Œuvres poétiques, 1:531, note to Rondeau VIII. The rondeau also is included in a 1537 edition of L’Adolescence clémentine (s.n., s.d.) that appears to be printed by Denys de Harsy, who also printed the Comptes amoureux. On two earlier Denys de Harsy editions of Marot’s work, see Francis A. Johns, “Notes on Two Unreported Editions of Clément Marot by Denys de Harsy, 1534–1535),” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 50, no. 1 (1988): 87–93.

286 Translation Notes 4. On Dido, see Tale One, note 31. Phyllis is a daughter of a Thracian king who falls in love with Demophon, son of Theseus. He leaves her to arrange his affairs in Athens, promising to return. When he does not return, Phyllis hangs herself. Ovid writes of their tragic love story in the second letter of his Heroides, translated into French by Octavien de Saint Gelais, Les XXI Epistres Dovide translatees de latin en francoys Par Reverend pere en dieu Monseigneur Levesque Dangoulesme. (Paris: Guillaume de Bossozel, 1534), fo.6v-fo.11r. The nymph Oenone was Paris’s prior to his Judgment, though he abandons her for Helen. See Tale Two, note 7. Phaedre is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë and wife of Theseus. See Tale One, notes 78 and 79. Medea was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis and a sorceress. With her magic, she assists Jason in obtaining the Golden Fleece. See Tale One, note 42. 5. On Phoebus Apollo, see Tale One, note 10. 6. In the original French edition, the G gathering begins here, on page 49r. 7. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (3.453–658), Narcissus is the son of the river god Cephisus and the nymph Liriope. On Narcissus in the work of another sixteenth-century Lyonnais writer, see Deborah Lesko Baker, Narcissus and the Lover: Mythic Recovery in Scève’s Délie (Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1986). 8. Jupiter and Apollo had numerous lovers, both divine and mortal. Mars is infamous for his love affair with Venus; Aeneas is the son of the illicit couple. 9. Ovid recounts the story of the nymph Echo, whom Juno punishes by depriving her of the power to converse within the Narcissus story. See note 7 above. 10. In the original French, the author indeed refers to the goddess as Saint Juno, further suggesting that in this fictional world, pagan gods and goddesses stand in for Christian religious figures. On the juxtaposition of Christian and pagan traditions, see also Tale One, note 3. 11. On Adonis, see Tale One, note 29. 12. Thetis, wife of Peleus and mother of Achilles (see Tale Two, note 15), is a Nereid and sea goddess. Here, the author refers to Thetis and Phoebus (the sun god) to indicate the time of day: sunset. 13. In the original French, the noun “Lyon” is capitalized, suggesting a possible allusion to the town of Lyon. Although the animal has no etymological connection to the town, it has deep associations with its heraldry. From the tenth century, Lyon’s blazon depicted a gules (red) field with a lion rampant displayed argent, armed. Generally, the lion is facing dexter (right), from the direction of the person holding the shield, thus to the viewer’s left. If the sun has reached its midday perch (l’arc de midy) and is warming the lion’s back, this would correspond roughly to the early hours of the afternoon on a clock’s face. The following

Translation Notes 287 description of the wood as shady and thick with leaves further suggests a contrast with the atmosphere of the town, where the sun shines brightly. 14. On Venus and Adonis, see Tale One, note 29. On Jupiter’s infamous love affairs, see Tale One, notes 12 and 32. 15. In the original French edition, the H gathering begins here, on page 57r. 16. Madame Minerve’s commentary at the close of this tale alludes indirectly to two passages from Paul’s epistles, which are addressed here and in note 18 below. Calling to mind the title of Jeanne Flore’s work and Madame Minerve’s preliminary poem to ladies-in-love, she first warns her listeners to avoid scorning love and condemning Cupid’s sovereignty. Rather, she urges her listeners to embrace mutual love. Though Minerve replaces the Christian context with a pagan, illicit one, Paul also emphasizes mutual love in his letter to the Romans: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The Oxford Annotated Bible, Romans 12.9–21. 17. On Apollo’s association with Delos, see Tale One, note 11. 18. By accusing Madame Cebille of obscuring her vision with a “veil” of obstinacy and failing to disavow her faulty beliefs, Madame Minerve again points to St. Paul: Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. […] Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of

288 Translation Notes the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. The Oxford Annotated Bible, 2 Corinthians 3.1–18.

Tale Five 1. This tale is the fourth and final in the Pugnition. Although the author indicates at the start of this tale in both the Comptes amoureux and the Pugnition that Madame Sapho is the storyteller, Pérouse modifies this to Madame Salphionne (p. 183, n. 3). Madame Salphionne does, indeed, appear in both editions at the end of the tale as the hostess of the gathering. However, in the Pugnition, it is quite clear that Madame Sapho is the one to close the tale. Although the end of this tale is slightly altered in the Comptes amoureux, and it is somewhat ambiguous as to which storyteller is closing the tale, I choose to honor the clarity of the Pugnition, and preserve Madame Sapho as the storyteller who begins and ends the tale. 2. Here, the author refers to Dionysius I of Syracuse (Dionysius the Elder), an oppressive Greek tyrant of the fourth century BC. He ruled much of present-day Sicily, attempted a conquest of mainland Italy, and fought against Carthage. He appears in canto 12 (103–7) of Dante’s Inferno as an example of a bloody tyrant. 3. Here, I make an educated guess that the long, smoldering burn of peat fires is the appropriate reference. Due to its high carbon content, peat has long been used as a fuel, and peat bog fires have been known to burn for years, even hundreds of years, at a time. I base my assumption on the length of the fire mentioned (500 years) and on the variant in the Juste edition, in which “Garbonniere” is spelled “Carboniere” (H5r), the adjectival form of carbon. 4. The tale of Nastagio is taken directly from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1349– 1353). The storyteller Filomena offers Nastagio’s story as the eighth tale of the fifth day. Note the similarities between Madame Sapho’s introduction and that of Filomena: No sooner did Lauretta fall silent, than at the bidding of the queen Filomena began as follows: Adorable ladies, just as our pity is commended, so is our cruelty severly punished by divine justice. And in order to prove this to you,

Translation Notes 289 as well as to give you an incentive for banishing all cruelty from your hearts, I should like to tell you a story as delightful as it is full of pathos. The Decameron, 2nd ed., trans. and ed. G. H. McWilliam (New York: Penguin, 1995), 419. For a sixteenth-century French translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron, see Le Decameron de Messire Jehan Bocace Florentin, nouvellement traduict d’italien en francoys par Maistre Anthoine Le Macon conseiller du Roy et tresorier de l’extraordinaire de ses guerres (Paris: Estienne Roffet, 1545), 134v–136v. This edition is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of rare books (Rés. Y2-206) and has been digitized, http:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8600071m. At the request of Lorenzo de Medici (The Magnificent), the Italian painter Sandro Botticelli painted a series of four paintings in 1483, depicting scenes from the story of Nastagio. The paintings were given as a wedding gift to the Pucci family in Florence. Three of these paintings are now in the Prado museum in Madrid. See Encyclopaedia Brittanica Online, s.v. “Sandro Botticelli,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/75231/ Sandro-Botticelli/782/Mythological-paintings. 5. Chiasso was a small, medieval village known for its horse market in the fifteenth century and a border town for lodging. In the present day, Chiasso is a municipality in Switzerland, near the Italian border. 6. Here, the author is referring to the liturgical hour, beginning at midnight with Matins, continuing with Lauds at three in the morning, Prime at six o’clock, Terce at nine o’clock, and so on. Thus, the fifth hour of the day would have been approximately eleven o’clock in the morning. 7. The mastiff is a breed of dog found in Europe since 3000 BC. Mastiffs are quite fierce, powerful and large, often used as guard dogs and in war; they even fought against gladiators and animals in ancient Rome. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s. v. “mastiff,” http://www. britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/368782/mastiff. 8. Minos was a king of Crete and judge of the dead in the Underworld. He appears in the Odyssey (11.650–55). See also Marot’s Enfer, written in 1529 and first published in 1539, according to Defaux, Œuvres poétiques, 2:799, note to p. 19. The Parcae, or Fates, were associated with weaving and spinning, a metaphor for life. Each of the Fates had a specific role: Klotho held the distaff, and Lachesis pulled the thread, which Atropos then cut off. 9. Pérouse notes that Jeanne Flore adds this detail to Boccaccio’s tale and most likely refers to the sack of Rome in 1527, a relatively recent event (p. 190, n. 25). Following his defeat at Pavia in 1525, François Ier then lost the lands that he had claimed in Italy. The French king then formed an alliance with Florence, Venice, Milan, and the papacy against Spain, which called their troops away from Italy. Charles V took advantage of their absence to send his Imperial troops to attack and pillage Rome in May 1527.

290 Translation Notes 10. Orestes is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. In Euripedes’ tragedy Orestes (5th century BC), the Furies drive him mad. See Orestes, ed. Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr., trans. E. P. Coleridge (New York: Random House, 1938). 11. Son of King Priam, Hector was the great hero of Troy. He disproves of Achilles’s arrogance and fights him alone, but ultimately dies at his hands. See the Iliad (20.488–96). 12. In the original French edition, the I gathering begins here, on page 65r. 13. In the Odyssey (8.300–410), Venus and Mars are caught in a net forged by her husband Vulcan. The lovers then flee—Mars to Thrace and Venus to Paphos, where the Graces (see Tale One, note 45) honor and attend to her. 14. Odysseus lands on Phaeacia, which Alcinous ruled, and visits his palace and sumptuous gardens (7:129–54). 15. Fortune, or Fortuna, is the Roman goddess of chance and luck. 16. Here, Jeanne Flore refers to Paris Alexander, who confronts his brother Hector in book three of the Odyssey (3.42–102).

Tale Six 1. Here, the storyteller refers to the antagonist of Tale One, the first of the three tales added to the “core” of the collection for the Comptes amoureux edition. 2. On Argus, see Tale One, note 72. 3. Pérouse suggests in his edition of Contes amoureux (p. 200, n. 6) that True Tales of Love may have been the title of the Italian source of this tale, which is a rather faithful translation of an episode from Matteo Maria Boiardo’s romance Orlando Innamorato (1482). Indeed, in Charles Stanley Ross’s bilingual edition, the title given in Italian indicates that the text is “tradutto da la verace cronica de Turpino,” or, translated from the true chronicle of Turpin. See Orlando Innamorato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 32. Perhaps this book was referred to in French as vrayes narrations, or true tales? The story of Helias the Blond, Fleurdelise, and Daurine appears in Book 2, 25.24– 26.53, of the Innamorato, 679–93. In the Italian text, their names are Brandimarte, Fiordelisa, and Doristella. 4. Typhon is a fearful, powerful monster with a thunderous voice, hundreds of dragon-like heads and eyes that shoot fire. In Hesiod’s Theogony, he is born to Tartarus and Earth after Jupiter defeats the Titans. By throwing thunderbolts, Jupiter defeats Typhon and hurls him down toward Tartarus, where he ignites the earth (820–80). See Theogony, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper.

Translation Notes 291 5. See the Iliad (5.902–4). Hera screams at the Argives, and the volume of her shout rivals that of Stentor, whose voice was said be as powerful as that of fifty men shouting together. 6. See the Iliad (22.307–513). Hector’s killing of Patroclus incenses Achilles, who in turn kills Hector, ties his corpse to a chariot, and drags the body behind the cart through dust and dirt for all of Troy to witness. 7. Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BC and conquered lands stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indus River in present-day Pakistan. The Greek historian and philosopher Xenophon recounts his story in his fourth-century BC Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus). The work was widely read in the late Medieval and Early Modern periods as an example for rulers. A French translation was published in 1547, translated by Jacques de Vintemille, La Cyropédie de Xénophon (Paris: Estienne Groulleau pour J. Longis, 1547). In Lyon, Jean de Tournes printed an edition of this work in 1555, the same year as Louise Labé’s Euvres. Xenophon’s account of Cyrus the Great’s life does not go into detail about his infancy and Astyages’s dream. The Lyon edition of this work is available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (8-MANDEL-8) and has been digitized. http:// catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31673462c. Herodotus, however, discusses this in book one of The Histories, written in the fourth century BC (1.107–30), available in Latin in the early sixteenth century. See, for example, Herodoti libri novem musarum indita sunt nomina: musarum nomina Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polymnia, Urania, Calliope (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1502), available on microfilm in the collection Italian Books before 1601 (Cambridge, MA: Omnisys, s.d.). The microfilm reel has been digitized, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ cb37244613g. A brief account of Astyages’s dream also appears in manuscripts and early printed editions of Speculum humanae salvationis and the French translation, Le Mirouer de redemption de lumain lignage (s.l.: s.n., 1479, among others). The Bibliothèque nationale de France has a number of manuscripts and print editions (e.g., Rés. A. 1242) in its department of rare books. 8. While Cyrus founded the Achaemenid Empire, Darius III (the Great) was its last king. Alexander the Great invaded Persia in 334 BC and pillaged and burned its capital, Persepolis, in 331. 9. Pompey was a member of the Roman nobility and a prominent political and military figure in the first century BC. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus formed a political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Pompey had married Caesar’s daughter, Julia, in order to solidify the alliance, but once she died in childbirth, the alliance grew increasingly contentious. While Caesar was in Gaul fighting Vercingetorix, Pompey allied himself with Caesar’s enemies, instigating a civil war. Pompey ultimately was killed in Egypt. Plutarch recounts these events in The Parallel Lives; see Roman Lives, “Pompey,” pp. 216–96. On this work, see Tale One, note 37.

292 Translation Notes 10. Meliador was Tristan’s father, king of Lyonesse (Léonois in French). Both appear in the medieval Arthurian cycle Prose Tristan (Tristan en prose), written in the thirteenth century. The most celebrated telling of Lancelot’s quest for Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur, is in Chrétien de Troyes’s twelfth-century Le Chevalier de la charette (The Knight of the Cart). For a sixteenth-century French edition of the Prose Tristan, see Des grandes proesses du tres vaillant noble et excellent chevalier Tristan filz du noble roy Meliadus de leonnoy et chevalier de la table ronde (Paris: s.n., 1533). Numerous copies of this book are available in Europe and in North America, including at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Y2-66. 11. Gawain is a devoted friend of Lancelot and nephew of King Arthur. He figures prominently in Chrétien’s Perceval, le Conte du Graal (Perceval, the Story of the Holy Grail). Gawain is said to be the son of Lot, king of Lothian and Orkney (Orcanie), and Morgause. 12. Laocoön, a priest of Neptune in Troy, warns the Trojans against the wooden horse in which the Greeks were hiding. This angers the goddess Minerva, who sends sea serpents to attack Laocoön and his sons. The Trojans scatter in fear at the sight. Virgil writes of this episode in the Aeneid (2. 50–288). 13. In the original French edition, the K gathering begins here, on page 73r. 14. While the expression “tomber (cheoir) de la poêle dans la braise” literally refers to an object (e.g., bacon) falling from a sizzling skillet onto the hot coals below, its figurative meaning is “to go from bad to worse.” See, for example, Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (Paris: Coignard, 1694), s.v. “tomber”: “On dit aussi prov. & fig. tomber de la poële dans la braise, pour dire, Tomber d’un meschant estat dans un pire.” Google e-book. My translation attempts to preserve the sense of the French expression. 15. The storyteller truncates the tale here, while in the Innamorato, the tale continues with Brandimarte marrying Fiordelisa and Teodor marrying Doristella. See book 2, 27.32, p. 701 in the Ross edition.

Tale Seven 1. Although I preserve the original French spelling in the translation, Guillem de Cabestany was a twelfth-century Catalan troubadour from Cabestany, in the Roussillon region, a small village in southwestern France near the Mediterranean, in the current-day department of Pyrénées-Orientales. Troubadours were lyric poets, most active in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, who circulated among courts in the south of France. They often composed and sang of love’s joys and trials and in praise of an exalted beloved, though their lyric was not limited to this matter. Margarita Egan, in The Vidas of the Troubadours (New York: Garland, 1984), explains that manuscripts of troubadours’ lyrics often contain prose biographies of the poets called vidas that introduce the ensuing poems. Egan offers translations of two versions of Guillem de Cabestany’s biography. Jean Boutière and A.-H. Schutz also include multiple manuscript versions of his vida in their Biographies des troubadours (New

Translation Notes 293 York: Burt Franklin, 1972): 154–72. According to Egan, these biographies “represent a vital link between the didactic tradition of the Middle Ages (commentaries, glosses on classical texts, exemplary lives of saints) and the fictional short stories of the Renaissance […]” (xiii). Boccaccio also recounts a version of this vida in the Decameron, the ninth tale told on the fourth day. See The Decameron, 349–52, and the sixteenth-century French translation, 113r–114r. See also Tale Five, note 4. 2. In the original French edition, the L gathering begins here, on page 81r. 3. Francesco Petrarco, known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian poet and early humanist of the fourteenth century. His most celebrated work is a cycle of love sonnets, Canzoniere, written for his beloved Laura, whom he claimed to have met in Avignon. Maurice Scève ostensibly discovered Laura’s tomb in 1533; Jean de Tournes refers to Scève’s discovery in the printer’s preface to Petrarch’s work (Il Petrarca, Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1545). See Nicole Bingen, “Les Éditions lyonnaises de Pétrarque dues à Jean de Tournes et à Guillaume Rouillé,” in Les Poètes français de la Renaissance et Pétrarque, études réunies par Jean Balsamo (Droz: Geneva, 2004), 139–55. See also Thomas Hunkeler’s first chapter, “Ouvertures,” in Le Vif du sens: corps et poésie selon Maurice Scève (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 27–64. 4. In Greek mythology Orpheus is a celebrated poet and musician and a son of Apollo. His brother Linus is associated with mourning and funereal music. On Orpheus, see Tale One, notes 37 and 56. 5. As Pérouse notes (p. 221, n. 6), Jeanne Flore alters the details of the Provençal Vida. Though in the Comptes amoureux she is a duchess, in the Provençal versions, she is named Saurimonde, the wife of the castellan (châtelain in French, a sort of governor of a castle and its territory) of Castel-Roussillon, near present-day Perpignan. 6. On Fortune, see Tale Five, note 15. 7. The Titans, children born of the marriage between Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia), is a generation of gods that preceded the twelve gods of Mount Olympus. The Olympians overthrew the Titans after a ten-year war that Zeus, the son of a Titan, instigated. In Hesiod’s Theogony, (207–10), Heaven calls his children Titans (meaning Strainers) in a reproachful manner, a reference that may explain Jeanne Flore’s comparison, since he, too, will do a deed requiring vengeance: “For they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and […] vengeance for it would come afterwards,” Theogony, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper. 8. In the Iliad (16.938), Euphorbus is “the best of his own age.” 9. On the literary history of the “Eaten Heart” story, see Le Coeur mangé: récits érotiques et courtois des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Danielle Régnier-Bohler (Paris: Stock, 1979); Milad Doueihi, A Perverse History of the Human Heart (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Madeleine Jeay, “Consuming Passions: Variations on the Eaten Heart Theme,” in

294 Translation Notes Violence against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 75–96; and Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, “The Heart of Guillem de Cabestaing: Courtly Lovers, Cannibals, Early Modern Subject,” Exemplaria 17, no. 1 (2005): 57–102. 10. Pérouse suggests that the storyteller refers here to Alfonso II of Aragon, who also was a troubadour and a contemporary of Guillem de Cabestany. The realm of Alfonso II spanned both sides of the Pyrenees, including Barcelona, Aragon, Provence, Roussillon, and Cerdanya. He was a patron of the arts and, in fact, provided other troubadours ample inspiration. See, for example, The Poems of the Troubadour Bertrand de Born, ed. William D. Paden, Tilde Sankovitch, and Patricia Stäblein (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986). 11. In the Vida, the tomb is constructed in Perpignan, before the doors of the church. Could this be the church of St-Jean-le-Vieux, consecrated in 1025 by the Count of Roussillon, Gausfred II, and Bishop Elne Beranger?

Jeanne Flore to the Reader 1. On the final poem and the larger literary and social context of mismatched marriage, see the introduction to this volume, pages 33–48. 2. On the term “fiction de poësie,” see Hervé Campangne, Mythologie et rhétorique au XVe et XVIe siècles en France (Paris: Champion, 1996), particularly “introduction,” 1–7, and his discussion of “poétrie” and “science poétique,”18–21. Here, Campangne underscores the fundamental role of classical mythology in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French literature, and he explains that in poetic and rhetorical treatises of the time, the terms “poétrie,” or “fiction mythologique,” refer to a corpus of exempla—both mythological and biblical— employed as a technique that seeks to uncover some truth or origin. 3. Here, Jeanne Flore alludes to the medieval exegetical tradition.

Appendix 1

La Déplourable fin de Flamete, Elegante invention de Jehan de Flores espaignol, traduicte en Langue francoyse. Lyon: Francoys Juste, 1535. Formula: 8ºA-F8[-F6]G-I8 ($4sign.); ff. [1]feuillet ii – lxxi. Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Rés. 813768.

295

296 Appendix 1 [A1v] Epistre proemiale. Je ne scay, o lecteurs benivoles, qui plustost m’a meu vous publier ceste mienne assez lourde translation de langaige Espaignol en Francoys, ou le regret qu’aves de la non finie histoire de Flammete, qui vous tient en desir suspenduz, pour vous consouler, ou la mienne experimentee tourmente d’amours, que t’avois propose vous manifester, pour vous apprendre. Toutesfoys ayant secouru tempestueuse fortune, et comme bon et expert marinier en la naufrageuse mair d’amour, et eschappe que fus d’ycelle vous ay bien voulu communiquer ce present libvret, tant pour estre la matiere semblable a mon propos, que aussi pour par plus prouvee histoire vous enseigner a cauteleusement aymer, qui n’a ayme, et saigement desaimer, qui es lacs de ce cruel tyrant amour est entreprins. Parquoy en lisant facilement congnoistres, que plus pour vous monstrer le perilleux guay, ou les meilleurs ans de ma vie ont passe, que pour oustentation de mon jeune scavoir, vous ay faict participants de ce mien sot traduire, duquel, je vous prie, excuseres humainement les faultes, plus que ma grosse et inaccoustumee plume n’a sceu faire, et a Dieu.

Appendix 1 297 Prefatory epistle. I know not, my good readers, the precise source of my inspiration for publishing this rather dense translation from Spanish to French for you. Perhaps it was to attenuate your frustration over Flamète’s unfinished story, which had captivated your interest only to leave you craving its resolution. Perhaps it was to teach you through the example of my own experience with love’s turmoil, which I had indeed considered making public to you. Nonetheless, having weathered fortune’s tempestuous storms, having refined and perfected my skills at navigating love’s harrowing seas, and having escaped from the perils of both, I thought it appropriate to offer you the present booklet. I do so not only because this story quite closely resembles my own, but also because the veracity of the events herein recorded may better succeed in teaching you. I urge those who have not yet loved another to do so with extreme caution, and those who already are entwined in the web of that cruel tyrant Cupid to disentangle themselves with equal caution. For this reason, you will easily discern as you read that my motivation lies rather in describing in detail that perilous portof-call where I spent the better part of my life, than in any pretentions of putting my youth and erudition on display. I now share with you my unremarkable translation, and I pray that you will greet the mortal flaws exercised by my uncouth and unaccustomed quill with pardon and largesse, for it knew no better. And with that, I wish you Godspeed, my dear reader.

298 Appendix 1

Preliminary epistle and poem from La Déplourable fin de Flamete.

Appendix 2

Comptes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore, touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent & mesprisent le vray Amour. Lyon: s.n. [Denys de Harsy], s.d. [1542]. Formula: 8°A-I8K8L4($4 sign.)[1]ii-lxxxiiii. Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Rés. 813259.

299

300 Appendix 2

Droictz nouveaux publiez de par messieurs les Senateurs de temple de Cupido, sur l’estat & police D’amour pour avoir entendu le different de plusieurs amoureux & amoureuses. Lyon: Denys de Harsy, 1542. Formula: 8°A-I8K-N8($4sign.)O4($3sign.); 108 leaves unnumbered. Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Rés. B 512218.

Appendix 2 301

Woodcut images from Comptes amoureux (11r) and Droictz nouveaux (B1r).

302 Appendix 2

Woodcut images from Comptes amoureux (81r) and Droictz nouveaux (A6r).

Appendix 3

The Birth of Venus, c.1485 (tempera on canvas), Botticelli, Sandro (1444/5–1510) / Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images XIR 412.

303

304 Appendix 3

Death and the Old Man, from ‘The Dance of Death’, engraved by Hans Lutzelburger, c.1538 (woodcut) (b/w photo), Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8–1543) (after) / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images XJF 143259.

Appendix 3 305

The Proxy Marriage of Marie de Medici (1573–1642) and Henri IV (1573–1642) 5th October 1600, 1621-25 (oil on canvas), Rubens, Peter Paul (1577–1640) / Louvre, Paris, France / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images XIR 17690.

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Index Achilles, 278n15, 286n12; and Hector, 211, 225, 289n11, 290n6; and Myrmidons, 71, 267n17 Acis. See Galatea Acrisius, King, 93, 125, 273n57, 279n25 Actaeon, 129, 280n30 Adonis: and Venus, 79, 103, 123, 125, 183, 189, 269n29, 275n80, 279n19, 286n11, 286n14 Aeacus, 267n17 Aeëtes, King, 89, 271n42, 285n4 Aegina (island). See Aeacus Aeneas, 67, 123, 265n7, 266n14, 279n19, 286n8; and Dido, 79, 267n18–19, 269n31, 273n65, 278n17 Aeneid, See under Virgil Aeolus (king of the Winds), 75, 267n19 Agamemnon, 289n10 agape. See under love Agenor (king of Tyre), 69, 266n12 Agripine, Madame, 111, 276n94. See also storytellers Albania, king of, 147, 282n48 Alciato, Andrea: Emblemata, 28n72 Alcides, 95, 273n63, 280n27. See also Hercules Alcinous, 215, 290n14 Alcmena, 97, 266n12, 274n68, 275n89 Alecto. See under Furies Alexander Molossus (king of Epirus), 71, 266n15 Alexander the Great, 77, 147, 268n25, 282n48; and conquest of Persia, 229, 291n8. See also Alexander Molossus

Alfonso II (king of Aragon), 259; as troubadour, 293n10 Alighieri, Dante. See Dante Alighieri Amie de court. See Borderie, Bertrand de la Amphitryon of Thebes, 69, 71, 107, 266n12, 275n89 Amye de Court: See Borderie, Bertrand de la Anaxarete, 284n11 Andro, Sir Jean, 43, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 272n54; and Dolet, 268n24 Andromeda: and Perseus, 85, 271n40, 277n8 Andromeda, Madame, 17, 63, 115, 153. See also storytellers Aneau, Barthélémy, 37 L’Angelier, Abel, 5n15 L’Angelier, Arnoul, 6, 50 Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours, Les. See Crenne, Hélisenne de Anteros. See Cupid: blind and sighted debate Antiochus (son of Seleucus), 157, 284n6 Antony, Mark, 121, 278n13 Aphrodite, 264n3–4, 277n7, 279n19. See also Venus Apicius, Marcus Gavius (the Delicate), 103, 275n83 Apollo, 87, 93, 97, 99, 103, 123, 155, 163, 177, 193, 251, 266n10–11, 267n21, 269n33, 272n48, 273n59, 274n73, 275n81, 280n28, 284n12, 286n5, 286n8, 287n17, 293n4. See also Phoebus Apollo

327

328 Index Apollodorus: Library, 266n16 Apuleius: and Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), 279n19 Arachne, 103, 155, 269n32, 274n77 Argives, 290n5 Argo, 272n51 Argonauts, 89, 271n42, 272n51 Argus, 219, 274n72, 290n2 Ariadne, 103, 187, 275n78–79 Ariosto, Ludovico: Orlando Furioso, 269–270n33 Artemis, 266n11 Arthur, King: and Knights of the Round Table, 81, 292n11; and Matter of Britain, 270n34, 291n10 Astyages: dream of (in Speculum humanae salvationis and Le Mirouer de redemption de lumain lignage), 227, 291n7 Athena, 117, 277n7, 282n45. See also Minerva Atropos, 203, 289n8 authority: of author, 3, 3n8; of storytellers, 22; traditional, subversion of, 7, 24–25, 29n74 authorship: ambiguous, 3, 3n8, 5, 6; and censure, 36–37; collective, 5, 5n16; pseudonymous, 1–2, 5, 5n16, 7n20; women and, 5, 5n13–15, 6–7, 12, 12n36, 14, 16, 18–22, 21n60, 22n61, 48, 49 Avarice, 159, 284n7 Bacchus, 127, 262n4, 269n33, 274n76, 280n27, 280n29, 281n35 Baker, Deborah Lesko, 1n1, 286n7 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 24n65 Barbarossa (Turkish pirate), 279n18 Barigase, 219 Barolsky, Paul, 23n63, 265n6 basilisk, 127, 131, 279–80n26, 281n43

Batolde: See under horses Baumgartner, Frederic, 275n84 Bauschatz, Cathleen, 19n52 Bennett, Andrew, 3n7–8 Berquin, Chevalier Louis de: as translator of Déclamation des louenges de mariage, 36–37, 37n90, 265n8 Bible: Genesis, 269n27; New Testament, 27, 34; Romans, 287n16; 2 Corinthians, 267n20, 287-88n18; 2 Timothy, 39n96 Bingen, Nicole, 293n3 Biraud, Michèle, 281n36 birds. See peacock; Philomela; Procne; Tereus Boccaccio, Giovanni, 5; The Decameron, 7, 19, 19n51, 288n4, 289n9, 292n1; Elegia di donna Fiammetta, 25n68 Boiardo, Matteo Maria: Orlando Innamorato, 55–56, 290n3 books: bibliography, 54n123; bibliotheca (bibliothèques), 4–5; imprints, 3–14, 3n8–9, 4n10–12, 5–6n16, 11n35, 12n36–37, 12–13n38, 13n39, 15n45, 18–23, 33, 39, 40, 50, 53; incunabula, 4; manuscripts, 3–5, 3n8–9, 4n11–12, 5n13–15, 15, 15n45, 18, 20–21, 21n59, 32; pecia system, 4. See also authorship Borderie, Bertrand de la: and L’Amie de court, 41–45 Boreas, 137, 281n38 Botticelli, Sandro: and Birth of Venus, 264n4, 303; and Nastagio story, 288–89n4 Boucher, Jacqueline, 9n26, 10n27 Bourbon, Gabrielle de, 21n59 Bourges, Clémence de, 5n14

Index 329 Bourgouyn, Simon: as translator of Plutarch, 270n37 Bowers, Fredson, 54n123 Brandimarte, 290n3, 292n15 Breiner, Laurence, 279–80n26 Briareos, 93, 273n61 Briçonnet, Guillaume, 35, 46, 46n111 Briolayne Fusque, Madame, 251, 263n5; and final poem, 33, 56n130, 261. See also storytellers Broomhall, Susan, 16n48, 20n53, 20n56–57, 21n58–59, 22n62, 263n7 Brown, Cynthia J., 3n8 Bucephelas. See under horses Bursa (city), 241 Buzon, Christine de, 29n73 Byblis, 79, 269n28 Caesar, Julius, 283n2; army of, 229, 291n9; and Cleopatra, 278n13 Caignazo, 95, 97 Calvin, Jean, 276n95 Campangne, Hervé, 294n2 Campbell, Julie, 8–9n24 Carados. See Knights of the Round Table caritas. See under love: agape Carley, James P., 270n37 Carter, John, 9n25 Carthage, 79, 123, 267n18–19, 269n31, 278n17, 288n2 Cassandre, Madame, 32n80, 215, 217, 219, 247, 249. See also storytellers Cassiopeia, 271n40 Castalia, 163, 284n12 Castiglione, Baldassar, 41, 41n99 Catherine de Navarre, 5n14 Catherine of Aragon, 19 Catherine de Medici, 10n27

Cato, Marcus Portius (Cato the Elder), 117, 277n4 Caviceo, Jacopo: Le Pérégrin, 39 Cebille, Madame, 15–16, 25, 32–33, 47–48, 63, 65, 109, 111, 115, 151, 153, 171, 193, 197, 199, 211, 213, 247, 259, 263n5, 263n1–2, 287n18. See also storytellers Cepheus, 271n40 Cephisus, 173, 181, 286n7 Cerberus, 93, 97, 149, 273n60, 283n49. See also Twelve Labors Ceres, 101, 274n66, 274n76 Ceto, 285n13 Cetus (sea monster), 271n42 Chang, Leah, 12, 12n36, 15n45 Charles V, 10n28, 279n18; and sack of Rome, 289n9 Charon, 149, 273n60, 283n49 Chartier, Alain, 5 Chartier, Roger, 11n33 Chiasso (town), 201, 289n5 Chrétien de Troyes, 271n39; Le Chevalier de la charette, 291n10; Perceval, le Conte du Graal, 292n11 Christ. See Jesus Christ Christian humanism, 13, 28, 28n72, 33–37, 33n81, 35n84, 39–41, 45–48, 45n107, 264n3 Christine de Pizan, 21; Book of the City of Ladies, 8 Christie, Richard Copley, 268n24 Clément, Michèle, 6n17, 14n41, 24n66 Cleopatra (queen of Egypt), 123, 278n13 Clymene, 277n5 Clytemnestra, 289n10 cockatrice. See basilisk Code, Lorraine, 16n48, 262n1 (Epistle)

330 Index cœur mangé. See eaten heart Colchis, 85, 271n42, 285–86n4 Colie, Rosalie, 24n66, 42, 42n100 Collège de la Trinité, 14; and Barthélémy Aneau, 37 Colombat, Bernard, 24n66 Colonna, Francesco: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 271n42 community (of letters, of women), 14, 15n46, 16–18, 17–18n49, 22, 24, 262n1 (Epistle). See also utopias compte, 262n3 Comptes amoureux, 7–9, 14–18, 276n94; and authorship, 1–2, 7n20; and literary world, 8–9, 13–14, 18–22, 24–33, 35–48, 262n3, 268n24, 293n5; and publication history, 6–7, 9n25, 23, 49–52, 49n113, 49–50n114, 50–51n115, 51n116–118, 52n119–121, 53–54, 263n5, 263n1, 276n1, 276–277n2, 285n3, 288n1, 290n1, 299 Cornine (lady of lower Brittany), 197 Corrozet, Gilles: on avarice, 284n7 Cotgrave, Randle: A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 57, 262n3 Cottrell, Robert, 28n72, 41n99, 45n107, 264n3 courtesans, 8n24, 262n2. See also Lais; Phryne cousin (cousine), 63, 262n2 Crenne, Hélisenne de, 1, 22; Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours, 29n73 Crete (island), 75, 103, 221, 268n23, 275n78–79, 276n2, 281n37, 289n8 Croesus (king of Lydia), 135, 281n35

Croix du Maine, François Grudé, sieur de la: Bibliothèque of, 4–5, 5n15 Cronos, 276n93. See also Titans Cupid, 52, 52n121, 57; blind and sighted debate (Eros and Anteros), 26–31, 28n72, 41n99, 45–48, 45n107, 262n2, 264n3; and mythology, 267n21, 270n38, 272n45–46, 275n81, 279n19; and Psyche, 125, 279n19; as sovereign, 15, 17–18, 61, 63, 65, 77, 79, 81, 83, 87, 93, 95, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 123, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163, 165, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 183, 185, 189, 191, 193, 203, 211, 253, 259, 264n3, 267n20, 287n16; and Venus, 75, 79, 83, 85, 95, 117, 131, 137, 141, 145, 215, 264n3 Cyclopes (plural of Cyclops). See Cyclops, Sicilian Cyclops, Sicilian, 71, 95, 119, 266n14, 273n64, 277n10 Cyprus, 121, 264n4, 272n44, 282n44 Cyrus the Great, 227, 229, 291n8; in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus), 291n7 Cythera (island), 125, 279n24 Daedalus, 75, 268n23; as printer’s mark, 49n112, 50–51n115, 52n121 Daenens, Francine, 2n5 Daly, Peter M., 28n72 Danaë: and Jupiter, 269n32, 275n88 Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy, 276n93, 288n2 Daphne, 75, 267n21, 280n28 Darius III, 229, 291n8

Index 331 Daurine, 235, 237, 239, 241, 243, 245, 247, 290n3 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 11n33, 23, 23n64, 24n65, 29n74, 32n79, 42n101 De Bourges, Clémence. See Bourges, Clémence de Déclamation des louenges de mariage. See Berquin, Chevalier Louis de De Crenne, Hélisenne. See Crenne, Hélisenne de Defaux, Gérard, 24n66, 37n91–92, 45n108, 274n75, 276n95, 278n16, 285n3, 289n8 De Graville, Anne. See Graville, Anne de De Harsy, Denys. See Harsy, Denys de DeJean, Joan, 283n2 Delbey, Evrard, 281n36 Delos (island), 193, 266n11, 287n17; as floating island, 69 Delphi, oracle of, 284n12; King Midas and, 281n35; as omphalos, 272n48 Demeter. See Ceres Demophon, 285n4 Denys the Tyrant, 197. See also Dionysius I of Syracuse deploration. See déploration déploration, 282n47; of Pyrance’s death, 147 Des Périers, Bonaventure, 1 Des Roches, les Dames (Madeleine and Catherine), 1, 1n1, 12n36, 49 Desrosiers-Bonin, Diane, 2n3, 262n3 De Tournes, Jean. See Tournes, Jean de Diana, 129, 187, 280n30, 284n10

Dido, 79, 173, 267n18–19, 269n31, 273n65, 278n17, 285n4 Diomedes, 282n45 Dione, 264n3 Dionysius I of Syracuse (Dionysius the Elder), 288n2 Dionysus. See Bacchus dogs: Actaeon killed by, 129, 280n30; of Alexander the Great, 147, 282–83n48; Cerberus, 93, 149, 273n60; mastiffs, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 289n7; Meridienne devoured by, 147 Dolet, Étienne, 1, 14n40, 41–42, 42n102, 49n113; and Gratien du Pont de Drusac, 268n24 Doliston, King, 237 Doris, 119, 277n10 Doristella, 290n3, 292n15 Douce, Francis, 264–65n5 Doueihi, Milad, 293n9 Duby, Georges, 29n74 Du Guillet, Pernette. See Guillet, Pernette du Du Pont de Drusac, Gratien. See under Dolet, Étienne Du Verdier, Antoine. See Verdier, Antoine du dwarf: as Andro’s companion, 83; in medieval romance, 271n39 eaten heart, theme of, 293n9 Ebreo, Leone: Dialoghi d’amore, 30–31, 30n75, 31n78, 41. See also Tyard, Pontus de Echo, 39, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, 286n9 Egan, Margarita, 292n1 Egeria (nymph), 163, 284n10 Elwood, Christopher, 34n82 Elysian Fields, 107, 276n91 Elysium. See Elysian Fields

332 Index emblems. See Avarice; basilisk; lamp; Medusa; mirror; peacock Enceladus. See under giants Ephialtes. See under giants Epirus, 71, 266n15 epistle (prefatory, introductory, dedicatory): in Comptes amoureux, 6, 6n18, 15–22, 15n45, 63, 262n1, 263n7; in Hélisenne de Crenne’s Les Angoysses douleureuses, 29n73; in La Déplourable fin de Flamète, 28–29n73 Erasistratus, 157, 284n6 Erasmus, Desiderius, 19, 24, 35n86; colloquies, 265n8; and conjugal love, 28; Encomium matrimonii, 36, 265n8; Institutio christiani matrimonii, 35n87, 36; on marriage, 34–37; Praise of Folly, 24 Ercole II d’Este, 10n27, 276n95 Eros, 27–47, 28n72, 41n99, 45n107, 264n3. See also under Cupid Étienne, Charles: as translator of Paradossi, 24n66 Euclio, 69, 266n9 Euphorbus, 149, 257, 283n50, 293n8 Euripedes: Orestes, 289n10 Europa: and Jupiter, 69, 266n12, 269n32 Eurydice, 270n37, 273n56 Ezell, Margaret J. M., 5n16 Fajardo-Acosta, Fidel, 293n9 Fantazzi, Charles, 20n54, 263n7 Farge, Arlette, 29n74 Ferguson, Gary, 38n94 fiction de poësie, 260–61, 294n2 Filomena: in Boccaccio’s Decameron, 288n4 Finch, Annie, 1n1 Finch, Marta Rijn, 1n1, 54–57 Fiordelisa, 290n3, 292n15

Five Cities of the Plain. See Pentapolis Flamète: in La Déplorable fin de Flamète, 25, 26n70, 27n71, 29–33, 39–40 Fleurdelise, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227 Flore, Jeanne. See Comptes amoureux Flores, Juan de, 25n67, 32, 39, 48 Fortune (Fortuna), 217, 253, 290n15, 293n6 Fowler, Barbara Hughes, 269– 70n33, 280n27 Fragonard, Marie-Madeleine, 282n47 François Ier, 10n27, 35–36, 280n32; and Charles V, 10n28, 279n18, 289n9 Furies, 209, 289n10; Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone 109, 276n93; in Dante’s Divine Comedy, 276n93 Gabrielle de Bourbon. See Bourbon, Gabrielle de Gaia (Earth), 266n13, 273n61, 293n7 Gaillarde, Jeanne, 4 Galatea, 277n10; as Doris’s daughter, 119 Gambon (guardian of Daurine), 241, 243, 245, 247 Ganymede, 125, 279n19 Gaskell, Philip, 54n123 Gawain. See under Knights of the Round Table giants: Enceladus, 71, 147, 266n13, 282n46; Ephialtes, 274n67; Otus, 274n67; defeated in tales: in Tale One, 73, 85, 87, 93, 95, 97; in Tale Six, 221, 223, 225, 237 Giroante, 117, 147

Index 333 Golden Fleece, 85, 271n42, 273n58, 285–86n4 Gonzaga, Lucrezia: and Ortensio Lando, 2, 2n5 Gorgon, 93, 125, 223, 271n40, 273n57, 279–80n26, 285n13; Medusa, 117, 277n8; Phorcys as mother of, 163, 285n13 Graces, the three, 87, 89, 91, 101, 103, 117, 173, 217, 272n45, 277n6, 290n13 Gradisse, 31–33 Graville, Anne de, 4–5, 5n13–14, 21n59 Gray, Floyd, 12, 12n37, 13n39, 25n69 Greimas, Algirdas Julien, 262n2, 279n20 Grieco, Sarah Matthews, 29n74 Grimalte, 31–32 Gros, Gérard, 282n47 Groulleau, Estienne, 291n7 gryphon, 79, 149, 269n33 Guillem de Cabestany. See Guillien de Campestain Guillet, Pernette du, 1, 1n1, 3n6, 10n31, 21, 49, 57n132 Guillien de Campestain, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259; as troubadour, 292n1, 293n9–10 Guinevere, queen, 229, 292n10 Gutenberg, Johannes, 4 Gutton, Jean-Pierre, 11n32 Hackney. See under horses hacquenée. See under horses Hades, 265n7, 270n37, 273n63. See also Pluto Hampton, Cathy, 38, 38n94, 39n95, 40n97, 43n103 Harpalyce, 117, 277n9 Harpalycus (king of Thrace), 277n9 Harpies, 67, 149, 265n6, 283n51

Harsy, Denys de, 9n25, 29n73, 40, 49–52, 49n112–14, 51n116, 51n118, 265n6, 285n3 Heath, Michael J., 35n87, 36, 36n88 Hebe, 155, 283n2 Hector, 211, 217, 225, 270n36, 283n50, 289n11, 290n16, 290n6 Hecuba, 270n36 Helen of Troy, 125, 270n36, 275n82, 277n7, 279n21, 279n24, 285n4; as Leda’s daughter, 103 Helias the Blond, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 235, 237, 239, 290n3 Henri IV, 269n30 Hera, 277n7, 290n5. See also Juno Heracles. See Hercules heraldic devices: ivy, 280n29; laurel, 280n28; lion (and Lyon), 286n13; myrtle, 280n27; oak, 85, 89, 95, 137, 139, 281n39; salamander, 280n32 Hercules, 93, 97, 99, 266n12, 266n16, 267n22, 270n37, 272n52–53, 273n59–60, 273n63, 274n66, 274n68, 281n39, 283n2 Herodotus: History, 281n35, 291n7 Héroët, Antoine, 28; La Parfaite Amye, 41–42, 42n102, 45 Heroides. See under Ovid Hervey, Sandor, 52n122 Hesiod: Theogony, 264n4, 266n16, 290n4, 293n7 Hesperides, 75, 267n22 Higgins, Ian, 52n122 Hill, Christine, 42n102 Hippogriff, 269–70n33 Hippolytus, 275n79, 284n10 Holbein the Younger, Hans: Dance of Death (Danse macabre; Les simulachres et historiees faces de la mort), 264–65n5, 304

334 Index Homer: Iliad, 149, 225, 270n36, 283n50, 289n11, 290n5–6, 293n8; Odyssey, 266n14, 278n12, 281n34 Horace: Ars Poetica, 278n14 horses: Batolde, 219, 223, 235, 237; Bucephalus, 77, 268–69n25; Hackney (hacquenée), 125, 279n20; market in Chiasso, 199, 201, 289n5; mated with gryphons, 269–70n33; palfrey, 81; Trojan Horse, 282n45, 292n12; warhorse, 75 Hortence, Madame, 63, 263n5. See also storytellers Hortensia (Roman orator), 155, 283n2 Hortensius, Quintus, 283n2 Hosbegue the Jealous, 241, 243, 245, 247 Hubert, Françoise, 5n15 Huchon, Mireille, 2, 2n4, 10n29, 10n31 Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe, 35n86 Hunkeler, Thomas, 293n3 husbands, 19, 36, 44; jealous, 25, 41, 43, 243; older than bride, 43, 57, 133. See also names of individual husbands (Giroante; Hosbegue; Pyralius; Raymon de Castel) Hymenaeus, 79, 159, 269n30, 284n8 Hyrcania, forest of, 129, 273n65, 280n30, 281n41. See also lion, Hyrcanian Iarbas, King, 73, 267n18, 269n31 Icarus: in mythology, 268n23; as printer’s device, 1n2, 49n112 Idalium (city), 143, 282n44 Iliad. See under Homer Incardona, Janine, 14n41 Io: and Jupiter, 274n72

Iphis, 163, 284n11 irony, 43 Isolde, 229 Iswolsky, Hélène, 24n65 Itys: and Tereus, 281n36 James, Karen Simroth, 1n1, 3n6, 10n31 Janot, Denys, 6, 29n73, 41, 50, 284n7 Jason, 85, 271n42, 272n51, 273n58, 285–86n4 Jealous Castle, 43, 67, 71, 73, 83, 85, 87, 91, 97 Jeay, Madeleine, 293n9 Jenson, Nicholas, 12–13n38 Jesus Christ, 45n107, 264n3, 267n20, 269–70n33, 287n18 Johns, Francis A., 49n112, 285n3 Judgment of Paris, 121, 125, 277n7, 278n15, 279n22, 285n4 Juno, 75, 99, 117, 123, 155, 179, 181, 267n19, 272n43, 274n72, 277n7, 278n16, 283n2, 286n9–10. See also Hera Jupiter, 23, 69, 71, 79, 97, 103, 117, 125, 177, 181, 189, 193, 221, 264n3, 266n10, 266n12–13, 267n17, 269n31–32, 270n37, 271n41, 272n43, 272n45, 274n67–68, 274n72, 275n81, 275n87, 276n92, 277n3, 277n5, 278n15, 279n19, 281n39, 282n46, 283n2, 286n8, 286n14, 290n4. See also Zeus Juste, Françoys, 6, 12–13, 19n50, 27n71, 38–39, 49n114, 50, 288n3 Kaji, Yoshihiro, 49, 49n114, 51n116 Kelso, Ruth, 20n53, 263n7 Kemp, William, 22n61, 49, 49n114, 51n116

Index 335 Kerver, Jacques, 271n42 Knights of the Round Table, 81, 121, 229, 270n35; Carados, 81; Gawain, 81, 229, 292n11; Lancelot, 81, 229, 271n39, 292n10–11; Meliador, 81, 229, 292n10; Saigremor, 81; Tristan, 81, 229, 292n10 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 40n98 La Borderie, Bertrand de. See Borderie, Bertrand de la La Charité, Claude, 262n3 La Croix du Maine, François Grudé, sieur de. See Croix du Maine, François Grudé, sieur de la Labé, Louise, 1–2, 1n1, 2n4, 5n14, 6n17, 12n36, 49, 291n7 ladies-in-love, 7, 14, 17–18, 22, 26, 29, 42, 48, 53, 61, 65, 67, 69, 91, 115, 123, 125, 137, 145, 149, 153, 155, 163, 247 Ladon (dragon), 267n22 Lais, 119, 157, 277n11, 284n5 Lake Avernus, 67, 265n7 lamp, 103, 275n85 Lancelot. See under Knights of the Round Table Lando, Ortensio, 2, 2n5; Paradossi, 24, 24n66 Langer, Ulrich, 28n72 Laocoön, 231, 292n12 Larsen, Anne R., 1n1, 5n13, 20n56 Le Fournier, André, 19n50 Le Maçon, Antoine: as translator of Boccaccio’s Decameron, 288n4 Leonico Tomeo, Niccolo, 45n108 Le Preux, Poncet, 1n2 Lecoq, Anne-Marie, 280n32 Leda: and Jupiter, 81, 103, 107, 269n32, 270n36, 275n82, 275n89

Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques, 33n81, 34–35, 35n84–86, 39–40n96, 267n20 Lefranc, Abel, 30n76 Léonois. See Lyonesse Lesbos (island): and Sappho, 283n2 Lethe (river), 141, 281n42 Leto, 266n10 Leushuis, Reinier, 265n8 Levin, Carol, 5n13 Liber Pater, 101, 274n76. See also Bacchus lion, 71, 73, 85, 87, 89, 91, 95, 137, 141, 185, 255, 282n48; as Hercules’s clothing, 89; Hyrcanian, 97, 129, 273n65; Nemean, 71, 266n16, 272n52. See also under heraldic devices Linus, 251, 293n4 Liriope, 286n7 Liza (city), 235, 237, 239 Lobanov-Rotovsky, Sergei, 279–80n26 Logres, 81, 270n34 Longeon, Claude, 49n113, 268n24 Lorenzo de Medici (The Magnificent), 288–89n4 Lot: in Genesis, 269n27. See also Pentapolis Lot (king of Lothian and Orkney), 292n11 Lotrian, Alain, 45n108, 276n95 love: agape (caritas), 27–31, 41, 45, 48, 264n3; carnal, 7, 8, 27–31, 36, 42, 105, 107, 109, 111, 159, 161, 171, 219, 235; in Dialoghi d’amore, 30, 30n75; false love, 125, 279n23; ferme amour (true love), 28, 30–31, 40, 115, 255, 276n95; folle amour, 28–29, 39, 41, 45, 48, 276n95, 279n23; and marriage, 47–48, 69, 79; mutual, 193, 239, 287n16; philautia

336 Index (self-love), 39, 39n96, 46n110, 48; and querelle des Amyes, 41–47; in roman sentimental, 38–41. See also Cupid Lucienne, Madame, 17, 63, 65, 67, 115, 263n5, 263n1 (Tale One). See also storytellers Lycaon, 109, 276n92 Lyon: and annual fairs, 10–11, 10n30; and book trade, 5n14, 6, 10–14, 10n30, 10–11n31, 11n33–34, 12–13n38, 23–24, 23n64, 24n66; and religious dissidence, 34–35, 35n86, 37; socio-cultural context of, 2, 6n17, 9–11, 9n26, 10n27, 10n29, 10–11n31–32, 13–14; women and, 1, 4–7, 14, 14n41. See also under heraldic devices Lyonesse (Léonois), 292n10 Lyons, John D., 14n42 Macedonians, 229 mal mariée, 33, 42–43, 264n4 manuscripts. See under books Manutius, Aldus, 12n38, 271n42, 291n7 Marguerite de Navarre, 1, 14n42, 16, 19, 19n52, 21, 28, 28n72, 30–31, 30n76, 33n81, 34–35, 34n83, 35n84, 37, 46, 46n110– 11, 49, 264n3 Marie de Medici, 269n30 Marot, Clément, 1, 14, 54–56, 276n95; L’Adolescence clémentine, 13, 285n3; and Christian humanism, 28, 34; Déploration sur le trespas de feu messire Florymond Robertet, 282n47; Enfer, 289n8; and querelle des Amyes, 37, 37n91–92, 45, 45n108; Le Temple de Cupido, 274n75

marriage: and Christian humanism, 34–37, 37n92, 40–41; Hymenaeus as god of, 269n30, 284n8; and legal tradition, 42, 42n101; mal mariée and mismatched, 33–48, 69, 79, 159, 161, 167, 219, 237, 239, 261, 265n8. See also Erasmus, Desiderius Mars, 123, 177, 193, 213, 279n19, 286n8, 290n13 Martin, Henri-Jean, 10n30, 11n33–34, 12, 12n38 Mary (mother of Jesus), 264n3 McDonald, Peter D., 3n8 McKenzie, D. F., 3n8 McKerrow, Ronald B., 54n123 McKinley, Mary B., 14n42 McKitterick, David, 3–4, 3n9, 4n10–12, 21n60 McWilliam, G. H., 19n51, 288n4 Medea, 173; and Jason, 271n42, 273n58, 285n4, Medusa. See under Gorgon Meduse, Madame, 17, 63, 151, 153, 167. See also storytellers Megaera. See under Furies Meliador. See under Knights of the Round Table Melibée, Madame, 16, 43, 63, 65, 109, 111, 115, 263n1. See also storytellers Menelaus (king of Sparta), 270n36 Mercury: and Argus, 274n72 Meridienne, 39, 52n120, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 281n43, 282n45 Metamorphoses. See under Ovid Midas, King, 135, 281n35 Miernowski, Jan, 28n72

Index 337 Minerva, 145, 274n77, 277n7, 282n45, 285n13, 292n12; as patron goddess of printing, 22–23, 23n64, 54. See also Athena Minerve, Madame Égine, 15–17, 22, 15n45, 22–29, 40, 47–48, 54, 61, 63, 167, 169, 171, 173, 262n1, 263n5, 287n16, 287n18. See also storytellers Minos (king of Crete, judge of the dead), 203, 268n23, 275n78, 276n2, 281n37, 285n4, 289n8 Minotaur, 268n23, 275n78–79, 281n37 mirror, 121; in 2 Corinthians, 287–288n18; Medusa as, 117, 279–80n26 Mison, 115, 119, 125, 127, 129, 145, 147, 276n2 Moss, Ann, 23n63, 38n94, 265n6 Mother Nature, 107, 119, 173, 179, 185, 251 Mount Ida, 89, 117, 272n49, 277n7 Mount Olympus, 85, 91, 271n41, 279n19, 293n7 Mount Ossa, 97, 274n67 Mount Pelion, 97, 121, 274n67, 278n15 Mount Vesuvius, 163 Muses, 121, 257 music: Linus and Orpheus associated with, 91, 121, 251, 273n56, 283n2, 293n4 Myrmidons, 71, 267n17 Narcissus, 39, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, 286n7, 286n9 Nastagio, 39, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211; in Boccaccio’s Decameron, 288n4 Nauert, Charles, 33n81, 35n84–85

Nemean lion: See under lion Neo-Platonism, 41. See also Ebreo, Leone Neptune, 109, 285n13, 292n12 Nereids, 271n42, 286n12; Thetis, 121, 183, 277n7, 278n15, 286n12 Nereus, 277n10 North, Marcy L., 5n16 Numa, 284n10 Oceanus, 99, 149, 274n73, 283n52 Odysseus, 121, 266n14, 278n12, 290n14; and Trojan Horse, 282n45 Odyssey. See under Homer Oenone, 173, 285n4 Old Voice, 7, 33, 47 Olympus. See Mount Olympus Orestes, 209, 289n10 Orlando Furioso. See Ariosto, Ludovico Orlando Innamorato. See Boiardo, Matteo Maria Orpheus: and Eurydice, 270n37. See also under music Orth, Myra D., 270n37 Other Voice, 1–9, 21, 33 Otus. See under giants Ovid: Heroides, 283n2, 285n4; Metamorphoses, 23n63, 265n6, 266n12–14, 267n17, 267n21–22, 268n23, 269n28– 29, 269n32, 271n40, 271n42, 272n44, 272n48, 273n58, 274n72, 274n75, 274n77, 275n78–79, 276n90, 276n92, 277n5, 277n10, 280n28, 280n30, 281n35–38, 283n52, 284n8, 284n10–11, 285n13, 285–86n4 (Tale Four), 286n7, 286n9

338 Index Palladium (statue of Minerva), 145, 282n45 Pallas Athena. See Minerva Pamphile: in La Déplorable fin de Flamète, 26–27, 31–32 Panizza, Letizia, 2n5 Panofsky, Erwin: on blind Cupid, 28n72, 262n2 Pantagruel. See under Rabelais, François Panurge. See Rabelais, François: Tiers Livre Paphos, 75, 101, 213, 264n4, 290n13 Papillon, Almanque, 45n108 paradox, 24–25, 24n66, 25n67, 26n70, 30, 42, 42n100, 48 Parcae (Fates), 203, 289n8 Parfaicte Amye: See Héroët, Antoine: La Parfaicte Amie Paris Alexander, 81, 89, 121, 125, 217, 270n36, 272n49, 277n7, 278n15, 279n22, 279n24, 290n16; as imprudent judge, 117. See also Judgment of Paris Paris (city): and book trade, 4, 6, 10–11, 12n38, 34, 41 Pasiphaë, 103, 275n78, 285n4; as daughter of the Sun, 135, 281n37 Patroclus, 225, 283n50, 290n6 Paul, Saint, 39, 39n96, 267n20. See also under Bible (New Testament) peacock, 139; as Juno’s bird, 274n72, 278n16, 281n40 Peebles, Kelly, 55n128, 56n129, 57 Peleus, King, 121, 277n7, 278n15, 286n12 Peneus, 75, 127, 267n21, 280n28 Pentapolis (Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, Zeboim), 79, 269n27

Pérouse, Gabriel-André, 2n3, 6, 6n19, 49–51, 49n112–13, 273n59, 274n73, 275n84, 276n1–2, 282n45, 288n1, 289n9, 290n3, 293n5, 293–94n10 Perrot, Michelle, 29n74 Perry, T. Anthony, 30n75 Persephone, 99, 270n37, 274n71. See also Proserpine Persepolis, 291n8 Perseus, 85, 125, 271n40, 271n42, 273n57, 277n8, 279n25, 285n13 Persia, 227, 229, 291n7–8 Petrarch, Master Francesco, 251, 270n37, 293n3; and poetry, 54, 55n127 Phaeacia, 290n14 Phaedre, 103, 173, 275n78–79, 285n4 Phaedrus. See under Plato Phaëton, 117, 277n5 Phebosille the Fairy, 235, 237 Phidias, 105, 275n86 philautia. See under love Philomela: and Tereus, 281n36 Phineus: and Perseus, 85, 117, 271n40, 273n57, 277n8, 279n25 Phoebe, 284n10 Phoebus Apollo, 69, 75, 87, 123, 173, 183, 187, 266n10, 280n27, 286n5, 286n12. See also Apollo Phorcys. See under Gorgon Phrygia, 121, 125, 135 Phryne, 117, 277n4, 277n11 Phyllis, 173, 280n27, 285n4 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 40n98 Pirithous (king of the Lapiths), 81, 270n37–38 Plato, 91; Phaedrus, 272n55

Index 339 Plautus: Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), 266n9 Pliny the Elder: Natural History, 282–83n48, 284n6 Plutarch: The Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans, 270n37, 278n13, 291n9 Pluto, 81, 93, 95, 97, 99, 274n66. See also Hades Plutus: in Aristophanes’s Plutus, 155, 283n4 Polyphemus. See Cyclops Pompey, 270n37, 291n9 Poseidon: and Pasiphaë, 281n37 Priam (king of Troy), 71, 125, 217, 267n17, 270n36, 272n49, 279n24, 289n11 printers. See names of individual printers (L’Angelier, Abel; L’Angelier, Arnoul; Corrozet, Gilles; Groulleau, Estienne; Gutenberg, Johannes; Harsy, Denys de; Janot, Denys; Jenson, Nicholas; Juste, Françoys; Kerver, Jacques; Lotrian, Alain; Manutius, Aldus; Le Preux, Poncet; Rigaud, Benoist; Schoeffer, Peter; Tory, Geofroy; Tournes, Jean de; Vérard, Antoine) printing. See books; printers Procne: and Tereus, 281n36 Prose Tristan, 292n10 Proserpine, 270n37, 273n56. See also Persephone Psyche: and Cupid, 125, 272n46, 279n19 publishing. See books; printers Pygmalion, 87, 267n18, 272n44 Pyralius, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 83, 85, 91, 97, 99, 101, 105, 109, 219, 268n24

Pyrance, 39, 52n120, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147 Pythian festival, 89, 272n48, 275n81 python, 89, 99, 103, 272n48, 274n69, 275n81 querelle des Amyes, 8, 35, 40–48, 41n99 querelle des femmes, 8–9, 8n23, 8–9n24 Rabelais, François, 12, 24n65, 34; Gargantua, 285n2; Pantagruel, 13; Thélème (in Gargantua), 45; Tiers Livre, 33–34 Ravenna, 197, 199, 201, 207 Rawles, Stephen, 49n114 Ray, Meredith, 2n5 Raymon de Castel, 253, 255, 257, 259 Read, Kirk D., 15n46, 16n47, 17–18n49 religion: Catholicism, 29n74; Christian humanism, 33–37; 40n98, 45, 45n107; heterodox beliefs, 2, 23; and reform, 34n82, 45n107, 48, 265n8, 276n95 Renée de France, 10n27, 276n95 Reynolds-Cornell, Régine, 2n3, 26n70, 49–50n114, 262n3 rhetorical devices. See paradox; irony rhetorical space. See Code, Lorraine Rigaud, Benoist, 50 Robin, Diana, 5n13 Roman de la rose, 284n7 roman sentimental, 38–41, 47–48 Rome, 278n13, 289n7; Forum, 117, 277n4; sack of, 207, 289n9; Temple of Jupiter, 117, 277n3 Roper, Margaret, 19

340 Index Rosemonde Chiprine, 43, 67, 69, 73, 81, 83, 91, 97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 109, 111, 115, 264n4, 272n54 Rothstein, Marian, 31n78, 38n93 Rowland, Ingrid, 264n3 Royon, Claude, 11n32, 11n34 Rubens, Peter Paul: Les Épousailles de la reine ou La Réception de l’anneau, 269n30, 305 Saigremor. See under Knights of the Round Table Saint Gelais, Octavien de: as translator of Ovid’s Heroides, 285n4 Salphionne, Madame, 17, 32n80, 63, 65, 111, 211, 213, 217, 249, 263n5, 288n1. See also storytellers San Pedro, Diego de, 39 Sapho, Madame, 17, 63, 197, 211, 263n5, 263n1 (Tale One), 288n1. See also storytellers Sappho: as lyric love poet, 155; in Ovid’s Heroides, 283n2 Saulnier, Verdun-L., 14n40, 262n4 Saurimonde, 293n5 Scamander (river), 225 Scève, Maurice, 1, 10n27, 14, 14n40, 262n4; Délie, 278n16, 279– 80n26, 286n7; La Déplorable fin de Flamète, 25–33, 26n70, 27n71, 29n73, 35n86, 39–40, 48, 55, 295–98; discovery of Laura’s tomb, 293n3; Paradoxe contre les lettres, 24n66 Schoeffer, Peter, 4 self-love. See under love Seznec, Jean, 23n63 Sforza, Isabella: and Ortensio Lando, 2, 2n5 Sicily, 71, 147, 266n14, 288n2 Sinon, 282n45 Sirens, 121, 155, 278n12, 283n2

Société internationale pour l’étude des femmes de l’Ancien régime (SIEFAR), 2n4 sodalitium lugdunensis, 262n4 Stentor, 225, 290n5 storytellers, 7–8, 8n22, 14–17, 22, 24, 29, 33, 38, 42–43, 47, 53, 262n2, 263n5–6, 263n2 (Tale One), 264n3, 276n94. See also names of individual storytellers (Agripine, Madame; Andromeda, Madame; Briolayne Fusque, Madame; Cassandre, Madame; Cebille, Madame; Hortence, Madame; Lucienne, Madame; Meduse, Madame; Melibée, Madame; Minerve, Madame Égine; Salphionne, Madame; Sapho, Madame) Styx (river), 133, 281n34 Suarez, Michael F., S.J., 3n8 Sulayman the Magnificent, 279n18 Sychaeus, 73, 267n18 Tartarus, 290n4 Telle, Émile V., 37n90, 265n8 Tereus, 135, 281n36 Tethys, 274n73; as wife of Oceanus, 99 textiles, 10n29; silk, 10, 121, 217; taffeta, 101, 103, 274n74; velour, 81, 101, 125 Thélème. See Rabelais, François Theodore, 241, 243, 245, 247 Thera (island), 75, 267n19 Theseus, 97, 103, 270n37, 274n66, 275n79, 285n4 Thespis, 121, 278n14 Thetis. See Nereids third heaven, 75, 267n20 Thrace, 281n36, 290n13 tiers ciel. See third heaven

Index 341 Tisiphone. See under Furies Titans, 95, 255, 290n4, 293n7 Tithonus, 107, 276n90 Tomarken, Annette, 25n67, 41n99 Tomeo, Niccolo Leonico. See Leonico Tomeo, Niccolo Tory, Geofroy, 285n3 Tournes, Jean de, 2, 24n66, 30n75, 291n7, 293n3 Traversier, Sir Paulo, 199, 203, 207 tree: and Nastagio, 201; and Peneus, 127, 267n21, 280n28; and Pyralius, 109; and Pyrance, 141; golden apple, 75, 267n22. See also under heraldic devices (laurel; myrtle; oak) Tristan. See under Knights of the Round Table Triumvirate: First, 291n9; Second, 278n13 Trojan Horse, 282n45 Trojan War, 89, 267n17, 270n36, 279n24 troubadour. See Alfonso II; Guillien de Campestain Trudeau, Danielle, 34n83 True Love. See Cupid Twelve Labors, 266n16, 272n52. See also Hercules Tyard, Pontus de: as translator of Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, 30n75 Tyndareus, 81, 270n36 Typhon, 221, 290n4 Tyre, 266n12, 267n18, Underworld, 67, 81, 95, 99, 265n7, 270n37, 273n56, 273n60, 273n63, 274n66, 276n91, 276n2 (Tale Two), 281n34, 281n42, 283n49, 289n8. See also Hades Uranus (Heaven), 266n13, 273n61, 293n7

utopias, 13, 16, 45 Vance, Jacob, 46, 46n110 Varry, Dominique, 2n4, 10n31 veil: as metaphor for blindness, 46–48, 193; and St. Paul, 287n18 Venice, 289n9; and book trade, 11, 271n42, 291n7 Venus, 65, 73, 75, 79, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 101, 103, 107, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 133, 135, 137, 141, 143, 145, 147, 153, 169, 173, 183, 189, 197, 213, 215, 217, 264n3–4, 272n43–47, 272n50, 272n54, 277n7, 278n17, 279n19, 279n24, 280n27, 282n44, 284n11, 286n8, 286n14, 290n13. See also Adonis; Aphrodite; Cupid Verdier, Antoine du: Bibliothèque of, 1n2, 4–5, 5n14 Vérard, Antoine, 4, 265n6 Viennot, Éliane, 2n3, 49–50n114, 262n3 Vintemille, Jacques de: as translator of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus), 291n7 Virgil: Aeneid, 265n7, 266n14, 267n17–19, 269n31, 273n60, 273n65, 276n93, 277n9, 278n17, 280n30, 282n45, 283n49, 292n12; Eclogues, 269–70n33, 280n27 Vivès, Juan Luis, 19–20, 20n54, 263n7 Vivet, Jean-Pierre, 11n33 Voluptas, 89, 272n46 Vulcan, 87, 95, 103, 161, 264n3, 266n14, 272n43, 273n64, 284n9, 290n13

342 Index Warner, Lyndan, 11, 11n35 Winn, Colette H., 33n81 woman question. See querelle des femmes woman-in-love, question of. See querelle des Amyes woman-in-love, 9. See also ladies-in-love women-in-love, 161. See also ladies-in-love women writers. See under authorship (women and); see also names of individual writers (Bourbon, Gabrielle de; Bourges, Clémence de; Catherine de Navarre; Christine de Pizan; Crenne, Hélisenne de; Des Roches, les Dames; Gaillarde, Jeanne; Gonzaga, Lucrezia; Graville, Anne de; Guillet, Pernette du; Labé, Louise; Marguerite de Navarre; Sforza, Isabella) women: and literacy, 17–20, 20n53, 263n7; as literary patrons, 15–17, 16n47, 19, 23. See also community; Old Voice; Other Voice; see also under authorship (women and); ladies-inlove; love (and querelle des Amyes); Lyon (women and); mal mariée Wright, Louis B., 20n53, 263n7 Xenocrates, 117, 277n4 Xenophon: Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus), 291n7 Zephyrus, 101, 274n75 Zeus, 266n10, 271n41, 275n81, 276n90, 278n15, 279n19, 281n39, 282n46, 293n7. See also Jupiter