thou mightst hereafter wish, thou couldst not restore
to me, to wit, my honour; whereas, if I deprived thee of that one night
with me, 'tis in my power to give thee many another night in recompense
thereof, and thou hast but to choose thine own times. Let this, then,
suffice, and like a worthy gentleman be satisfied to have taken thy
revenge, and to have let me know it: put not forth thy might against a
woman: 'tis no glory to the eagle to have vanquished a dove; wherefore
for God's and thine own honour's sake have mercy on me."

The scholar, albeit his haughty spirit still brooded on her evil
entreatment of him, yet saw her not weep and supplicate without a certain
compunction mingling with his exultation; but vengeance he had desired
above all things, to have wreaked it was indeed sweet, and albeit his
humanity prompted him to have compassion on the hapless woman, yet it
availed not to subdue the fierceness of his resentment; wherefore thus he
made answer:--"Madam Elena, had my prayers (albeit art I had none to
mingle with them tears and honeyed words as thou dost with thine)
inclined thee that night, when I stood perishing with cold amid the snow
that filled thy courtyard, to accord me the very least shelter, 'twere
but a light matter for me to hearken now to thine; but, if thou art now
so much more careful of thy honour than thou wast wont to be, and it irks
thee to tarry there naked, address thy prayers to him in whose arms it
irked thee not naked to pass that night thou mindest thee of, albeit thou
wist that I with hasty foot was beating time upon the snow in thy
courtyard to the accompaniment of chattering teeth: 'tis he that thou
shouldst call to succour thee, to fetch thy clothes, to adjust the ladder
for thy descent; 'tis he in whom thou shouldst labour to inspire this
tenderness thou now shewest for thy honour, that honour which for his
sake thou hast not scrupled to jeopardize both now and on a thousand
other occasions. Why, then, call'st thou not him to come to thy succour?
To whom pertains it rather than to him? Thou art his. And of whom will he
have a care, whom will he succour, if not thee? Thou askedst him that
night, when thou wast wantoning with him, whether seemed to him the
greater, my folly or the love thou didst bear him: call him now, foolish
woman, and see if the love thou bearest him, and thy wit and his, may
avail to deliver thee from my folly. 'Tis now no longer in thy power to
shew me courtes