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Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 1492-1549

"The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.)"

For this reason Queen Margaret calls it the castle
church.--Ed.
Whilst he was alone the fancy took him that he might obtain by force
what neither prayer nor service had availed to procure him, and
accordingly he broke through a wooden partition which was between
the chamber where his mistress slept and his own. The curtains of his
master's bed on the one side and of the servant's bed on the other
so covered the walls as to hide the opening he had made; and thus his
wickedness was not perceived until his mistress was in bed, together
with a little girl eleven or twelve years old.
When the poor woman was in her first sleep, the servant, in his shirt
and with his naked sword in his hand, came through the opening he had
made in the wall into her bed; but as soon as she felt him beside her,
she leaped out, addressing to him all such reproaches as a virtuous
woman might utter. His love, however, was but bestial, and he would
have better understood the language of his mules than her honourable
reasonings; indeed, he showed himself even more bestial than the beasts
with whom he had long consorted.


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