er with much information as concerns the
sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth
and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most
illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had it from her
mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that was in
youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the rest you must
admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to be a
thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even in
these I have not ever deviated from what was at odd times narrated to
me by the aforementioned persons, and have always endeavored honestly
to piece together that which they told me.

[Illustration: "NICOLAS: A SON LIVRET" _Painting by Howard Pyle_]

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who will
jeer at you, and say that you and I have cheated them of your
purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi aurum
posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of necessity, the
tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that he cannot
undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably when the
resources of his shop amount at most to three scant yards of cambric.
Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would have
done it. A good conscience is a continual feast, and I summon all
heaven to be my witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world,
another Iliad. I lament the improbability of your doing this as
heartily as any person living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in
consequence to Heaven these same cavillers should now complain if they
insist upon considering themselves to be aggrieved.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed
you should elect to answer them by repetition of this trivial song
which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me.
And the song runs in this fashion:

_Depart, depart, my book! and live and die
Dependent on the idle fantasy
Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I._

_For I am fond, and willingly mistake
My book to be the book I meant to make,
And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake._

_Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill
In making you, that never spared the will
To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill._

_Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I
Had wrought in you some wizardry so high
That no man but had lis