The Tales of the Heptameron, Vol. IV | Page 7

so for fear of the husband. The gentleman, perceiving this, thereupon said to him--
"If it be your pleasure to say anything to her, you will see what manner of grace and speech is hers."
Then said Bernage to her--"Lady, your patience is as great as your torment. I hold you to be the most unhappy woman alive."
With tears in her eyes, and with the humblest grace imaginable, the lady answered--
"Sir, I acknowledge my offence to have been so great that all the woes that the lord of this house (for I am not worthy to call him husband) may be pleased to lay upon me are nothing in comparison with the grief I feel at having offended him."
So saying, she began to weep bitterly. The gentleman took Bernage by the arm and led him away.
On the following morning Bernage took his leave, in order to proceed on the mission that the King had given him. However, in bidding the gentleman farewell, he could not refrain from saying to him--
"Sir, the love I bear you, and the honour and friendship that you have shown me in your house, constrain me to tell you that, having regard to the deep penitence of your unhappy wife, you should, in my opinion, take compassion upon her. You are, moreover, young and have no children, and it would be a great pity that so fair a lineage should come to an end, and that those who, perhaps, have no love for you, should become your heirs."
The gentleman, who had resolved that he would never more speak to his wife, pondered a long time on the discourse held to him by the Lord de Bernage, and at last recognised that he had spoken truly, and promised him that, if his wife should continue in her present humility, he would at some time have pity upon her.
Accordingly Bernage departed on his mission, and when he had returned to his master, the King, he told him the whole story, which the Prince, upon inquiry, found to be true. And as Bernage among other things had made mention of the lady's beauty, the King sent his painter, who was called John of Paris, (3) that he might make and bring him a living portrait of her, which, with her husband's consent, he did. And when she had long done penance, the gentleman, in his desire to have offspring, and in the pity that he felt for his wife who had submitted to this penance with so much humility, took her back again and afterwards had by her many handsome children. (4)
3 John Perréal, called "Jehan de Paris," was one of the most famous painters of the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. At the end of 1496 we find him resident at Lyons, and there enjoying considerable celebrity. From October 1498 to November 1499 he figures in the roll of officers of the royal household, as valet of the wardrobe, with a salary of 240 livres. In the royal stable accounts for 1508 he appears as receiving ten livres to defray the expense of keeping a horse during June and July that year. He is known to have painted the portrait and planned the obsequies of Philibert of Savoy in 1509; to have been sent to England in 1514 to paint a portrait of the Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII., who married Louis XII.; and in 1515 to have had charge of all the decorative work connected with Louis XII.'s obsequies. In his Légende des Vénitiens (1509) John Le Maire de Belges praises Perréal's skill both in landscape and portrait painting, and describes him as a most painstaking and hardworking artist. He had previously referred to him in his Temple d'Honneur et de Vertu (1504) as being already at that period painter to the King. In the roll of the officers of Francis I.'s household (1522) Perréal's name takes precedence of that of the better known Jehannet Clouet, but it does not appear in that of 1529, about which time he would appear to have died. Shortly before that date he had designed some curious initial letters for the famous Parisian printer and bookseller, Tory. The Claud Perréal, "Lyonnese," whom Clement Marot commemorates in his 36th Rondeau would appear to have been a relative, possibly the son, of "Jehan de Paris."--See Léon de La Borde's Renaissance des Arts, vol. i., Pericaud ainé's Notice sur Jean de Paris, Lyons, 1858, and more particularly E. M. Bancel's _Jehan Perréal dit Jean de Paris, peintre et valet-de-chambre des rois Charles VIII. Louis XII., &c_. Paris, Launette, 1884.--L. and M.
4 Brant?me refers to this tale, as an example of marital cruelty, in his Vies des Dames Galantes, Lalanne's edition, vol. ix. p. 38.--L.
"If, ladies, all those whom a like adventure has befallen,