and of good family; and that gallants when going to keep an amorous
assignation should never go there like giddy young men, but carefully,
and keep a sharp look-out near the burrow, to avoid falling into
certain traps and to preserve themselves; for after a good woman the
most precious thing is, certes, a pretty gentleman.

THE MAID OF THILOUSE

The lord of Valennes, a pleasant place, of which the castle is not far
from the town of Thilouse, had taken a mean wife, who by reason of
taste or antipathy, pleasure or displeasure, health or sickness,
allowed her good husband to abstain from those pleasures stipulated
for in all contracts of marriage. In order to be just, it should be
stated that the above-mentioned lord was a dirty and ill-favoured
person, always hunting wild animals and not the more entertaining than
is a room full of smoke. And what is more, the said sportsman was all
sixty years of age, on which subject, however, he was a silent as a
hempen widow on the subject of rope. But nature, which the crooked,
the bandy-legged, the blind, and the ugly abuse so unmercifully here
below, and have no more esteem for her than the well-favoured,--since,
like workers of tapestry, they know not what they do,--gives the same
appetite to all and to all the same mouth for pudding. So every beast
finds a mate, and from the same fact comes the proverb, "There is no
pot, however ugly, that does not one day find a cover." Now the lord
of Valennes searched everywhere for nice little pots to cover, and
often in addition to wild, he hunted tame animals; but this kind of
game was scarce in the land, and it was an expensive affair to
discover a maid. At length however by reason of much ferreting about
and much enquiry, it happened that the lord of Valennes was informed
that in Thilouse was the widow of a weaver who had a real treasure in
the person of a little damsel of sixteen years, whom she had never
allowed to leave her apronstrings, and whom, with great maternal
forethought, she always accompanied when the calls of nature demanded
her obedience; she had her to sleep with her in her own bed, watched
over her, got her up in the morning, and put her to such a work that
between the twain they gained about eight pennies a day. On fete days
she took her to the church, scarcely giving her a spare moment to
exchange a merry word with the young people; above all was she strict
in keeping hands off the maiden.