s Mistress from the Grave]

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_TALE LX_.

_A man of Paris, through not making good inquiry concerning
his wife, whom he believed dead, though she was indeed
making good cheer with a chanter to the King, married a
second wife, whom, after having several children by her and
consorting with her for fourteen or fifteen years, he was
constrained to leave, in order to take his first wife back
again_.

In the city of Paris there was a man who was so good-natured that he
would have scrupled to believe a man abed with his wife, even if he had
seen him with his own eyes. This poor man married a woman whose conduct
was as bad as could be; nevertheless he perceived nothing of it, and
treated her as though she were the most virtuous woman alive. One
day, however, when King Louis XII. came to Paris, his wife surrendered
herself to one of the choir-men of the aforesaid sovereign, and when she
found that the King was leaving Paris and that she would no longer
be able to see the singer, she resolved to follow him and forsake her
husband. To this the chanter agreed, and brought her to a house that he
had near Blois, (1) where for a long while they lived together. The poor
husband, finding that he had lost his wife, sought her everywhere; and
at last it was told him that she was gone away with the chanter.

Wishing to recover the lost ewe which he had so badly watched, he wrote
many letters to her begging her to return to him, and saying that he
would take her back if she were willing to be a virtuous woman. But she
took such great delight in listening to the songs of the chanter, that
she had forgotten her husband's voice, and gave no heed to all his
excellent words, but mocked at them.

Therefore the husband, in great wrath, gave her to know that, since
she would return to him in no other way, he would demand her in legal
fashion of the Church. (2) The wife, dreading that if the law should
take the matter in hand she and her chanter would fare badly, devised a
stratagem worthy of such a woman as herself. Feigning sickness, she sent
for some honourable women of the town to come and see her, and this they
willingly did, hoping that her illness might be a means of withdrawing
her from her evil life, with which purpose they addressed the sagest
admonitions to her. Thereupon she, whilst pretending to be grievously
sick, made a show of weeping and acknowledging