t be
seen.

Her poor lover, thinking to find her according to her promise, failed
not to enter the room as softly as he could, at the appointed hour; and
after he had shut the door and put off his garments and fur shoes, he
got into the bed, where he looked to find what he desired. But no
sooner did he put out his arms to embrace her whom he believed to be his
mistress, than the poor girl, believing him entirely her own, had her
arms round his neck, speaking to him the while in such loving words and
with so beautiful a countenance, that there is not a hermit so holy but
he would have forgotten his beads for love of her.

But when the gentleman recognised her with both eye and ear, and found
he was not with her for whose sake he had so greatly suffered, the love
that had made him get so quickly into the bed, made him rise from it
still more quickly. And in anger equally with mistress and damsel, he
said--

"Neither your folly nor the malice of her who put you there can make
me other than I am. But do you try to be an honest woman, for you shall
never lose that good name through me."

So saying he rushed out of the room in the greatest wrath imaginable,
and it was long before he returned to see his mistress. However love,
which is never without hope, assured him that the greater and more
manifest his constancy was proved to be by all these trials, the longer
and more delightful would be his bliss.

The lady, who had seen and heard all that passed, was so delighted and
amazed at beholding the depth and constancy of his love, that she was
impatient to see him again in order to ask his forgiveness for the
sorrow that she had caused him to endure. And as soon as she could meet
with him, she failed not to address him in such excellent and pleasant
words, that he not only forgot all his troubles but even deemed
them very fortunate, seeing that their issue was to the glory of his
constancy and the perfect assurance of his love, the fruit of which he
enjoyed from that time forth as fully as he could desire, without either
hindrance or vexation. (3)

3 In reference to this story, Montaigne says in his Essay
on Cruelty: "Such as have sensuality to encounter, willingly
make use of this argument, that when it is at the height it
subjects us to that degree that a man's reason can have no
access... wherein they conceive that the pleasure doth so
transport us that our reason cannot perform its offi