e of
the gentleman at Pampeluna, and of the President at Grenoble was great,
but then it was equalled in magnitude by their vengeance. Moreover,
when we seek to praise a virtuous man, we ought not so to exalt a single
virtue as to make of it a cloak for the concealment of grievous vice;
for none are praiseworthy save such as do virtuous things from the love
of virtue alone, and this I hope to prove by telling you of the patient
virtue of a lady whose goodness had no other object save the honour of
God and the salvation of her husband."

[Illustration: 072.jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration: 073a.jpg The Lady of Loue bringing her Husband the Basin of Water]

[The Lady of Loue bringing her Husband the Basin of Water]

[Illustration: 073.jpg Page Image]

_TALE XXXVII_.

_The Lady of Loue so influenced her husband by her great
patience and longsuffering, that she drew him from his evil
ways, and they lived afterwards in greater love than
before_.

There was a lady of the house of Loue (1) who was so prudent and
virtuous, that she was loved and esteemed by all her neighbours. Her
husband trusted her, as well he might, with all his affairs, and she
managed them with such wisdom that his house came, by her means, to be
one of the wealthiest and best appointed in either the land of Anjou or
Touraine.

1 Loue is in Anjou, in the department of the Sarthe, being
the chief locality of a canton of the arrondissement of Le
Mans. The Lady of Loue referred to may be either Philippa de
Beaumont-Bressuire, wife of Peter de Laval, knight, Lord of
Loue, Benars, &c.; or her daughter-in-law, Frances de
Maille, who in or about 1500 espoused Giles de Laval, Lord
of Loue. Philippa is known to have died in 1525, after
bearing her husband five children. She had been wedded fifty
years. However, the subject of this story is the same as
that of the Lady of Langallier, or Languillier (also in
Anjou), which will be found in chapter xvii. of _Le Livre du
Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_, an English translation of
which, made in the reign of Henry VI., was edited in 1868 by
Mr. Thomas Wright for the Early English Text Society.--See
also Le Roux de Lincy's _Femmes celebres de l'ancienne
France,_ vol i. p. 356. Particulars concerning the Laval-
Loue family will be found in Duchesne's Histoire de la
Maison de Montmorency.--L. and M.