or of Zealand, under the bold Duke of Burgundy, had in vain
sought to seduce the affections of the beautiful wife of a citizen. The
governor imprisons the husband on an accusation of treason; and when the
wife appeared as the suppliant, the governor, after no brief eloquence,
succeeded as a lover, on the plea that her husband's life could only be
spared by her compliance. The woman, in tears and in aversion, and not
without a hope of vengeance only delayed, lost her honour! Pointing to
the prison, the governor told her, "If you seek your husband, enter
there, and take him along with you!" The wife, in the bitterness of her
thoughts, yet not without the consolation that she had snatched her
husband from the grave, passed into the prison; there in a cell, to her
astonishment and horror, she beheld the corpse of her husband laid out
in a coffin, ready for burial! Mourning over it, she at length returned
to the governor, fiercely exclaiming, "You have kept your word! you have
restored to me my husband! and be assured the favour shall be repaid!"
The inhuman villain, terrified in the presence of his intrepid victim,
attempted to appease her vengeance, and more, to win her to his wishes.
Returning home, she assembled her friends, revealed her whole story,
and under their protection she appealed to Charles the Bold, a strict
lover of justice, and who now awarded a singular but an exemplary
catastrophe. The duke first commanded that the criminal governor should
instantly marry the woman whom he had made a widow, and at the same time
sign his will, with a clause importing that should he die before his
lady he constituted her his heiress. All this was concealed from both
sides, rather to satisfy the duke than the parties themselves. This
done, the unhappy woman was dismissed alone! The governor was conducted
to the prison to suffer the same death he had inflicted on the husband
of his wife; and when this lady was desired once more to enter the
prison, she beheld her second husband headless in his coffin as she had
her first! Such extraordinary incidents in so short a period overpowered
the feeble frame of the sufferer; she died--leaving a son, who inherited
the rich accession of fortune so fatally obtained by his injured and
suffering mother.

Such is the tale of which the party story of Kirk appeared to Ritson to
have been a _rifacimento_; but it is rather the foundation than the
superstructure. This critic was right in the gener