had desired more than aught else, and
annoy he felt, for that his humanity moved him to compassion of the
unhappy woman. However, humanity availing not to overcome the
fierceness of his appetite [for vengeance], 'Madam Elena,' answered
he, 'if my prayers (which, it is true, I knew not to bathe with tears
nor to make honeyed, as thou presently knowest to proffer thine,) had
availed, the night when I was dying of cold in thy snow-filled
courtyard, to procure me to be put of thee but a little under cover,
it were a light matter to me to hearken now unto thine; but, if thou
be presently so much more concerned for thine honour than in the past
and it be grievous to thee to abide up there naked, address these thy
prayers to him in whose arms thou didst not scruple, that night which
thou thyself recallest, to abide naked, hearing me the while go about
thy courtyard, chattering with my teeth and trampling the snow, and
get thee succour of him; cause him fetch thee thy clothes and set thee
the ladder, whereby thou mayest descend, and study to inform him with
tenderness for thine honour, the which thou hast not scrupled both now
and a thousand other times to imperil for him. Why dost thou not call
him to come help thee? To whom pertaineth it more than unto him? Thou
art his; and what should he regard or succour, an he regard not
neither succour thee? Call him, silly woman that thou art, and prove
if the love thou bearest him and thy wits and his together can avail
to deliver thee from my folly, whereof, dallying with him the while,
thou questionedst aforetime whether himseemed the greater, my folly or
the love thou borest him.[387] Thou canst not now be lavish to me of
that which I desire not, nor couldst thou deny it to me, an I desired
it; keep thy nights for thy lover, an it chance that thou come off
hence alive; be they thine and his. I had overmuch of one of them and
it sufficeth me to have been once befooled. Again, using thy craft and
wiliness in speech, thou studiest, by extolling me, to gain my
goodwill and callest me a gentleman and a man of honour, thinking thus
to cajole me into playing the magnanimous and forebearing to punish
thee for thy wickedness; but thy blandishments shall not now darken me
the eyes of the understanding, as did thy disloyal promises whilere. I
know myself, nor did I learn so much of myself what while I sojourned
at Paris as thou taughtest me in one single night of thine. But,
granted I were inde