Of the morality of those days you must imagine something from these
instances. There are many more with which I have neither space nor
inclination to shock susceptibilities more delicate than were those of
a Cathedral Chapterhouse in the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries. The tale of Jehanne Dantot, for instance, in 1489, is one
of the most astonishing stories of the lengths to which desperation
and wickedness can drive a woman that I have ever read. A queer
glimpse of the economy of certain households is provided by the record
of 1534. Pierre Letellier married the daughter of Maitre Houeel, and by
a clause in the marriage-settlement it was arranged that the
father-in-law should board and lodge the young couple for three
years. They had not lived in the house long before they were
scandalised by the immoral behaviour of the old man, and Pierre
naturally quarrelled with him about it. The ill-feeling between the
two men came to a climax one night when young Letellier had been
supping in the town, and coming back late found that his father-in-law
had bolted the door. At length his wife heard his knocks, and as soon
as she had let him in he roundly abused the servants for keeping him
so long upon the doorstep. The old man at once appeared on the scene,
without much in the way of clothing, it would appear, but waving a
stout club called a "marcus." With this he beat Pierre about the head
and shoulders until the young man lost patience and killed his
father-in-law with his dagger or "sang de dey."

The taverns were of course as frequent a source of crime then as they
are now. But the fashion of wearing swords has made a drunken brawl
less fatal. The records of the Fierte might very well be used as a
dictionary of offensive weapons from the number of swords, daggers,
maces, rapiers, clubs, and pikes their pages contain from year to
year. It was at the double game of rapier and dagger that Marquet
Dubosc wiped off old scores after a quarrel at the Sign of the
Cauldron, near the Church of St. Michel, in 1502. He had been playing
dice with a man named Chouquet, and in the quarrel that followed about
payment, Chouquet had too many friends to be attacked safely. So
Dubosc waited till the next day, gathered a few companions of his own,
and killed his man in the woods near Croisset.

In 1511 the Chapterhouse records a tavern brawl that was settled on
the spot. There had been some dispute about a woman between Le
Monnier, a