The Tales Of The Heptameron Volume III Part 6

"Sister Marie, you know of what crime you are accused, and that your pretence of chast.i.ty has availed you nothing, since you are well known to be the very contrary of chaste."

"Bring here my accuser," replied Sister Marie, with steadfast countenance, "and you will see whether in my presence he will abide by his evil declaration."

"No further proof is needed," he said, "since the confessor has been found guilty."

"I hold him for too honourable a man," said Sister Marie, "to have confessed so great a lie; but even should he have done so, bring him here before me, and I will prove the contrary of what he says."

The Prior, finding that he could in no wise move her, thereupon said--

"I am your father, and seek to save your honour. For this reason I will leave the truth of the matter to your own conscience, and will believe whatever it bids you say. I ask you and conjure you on pain of mortal sin to tell me truly whether you were indeed a virgin when you were placed in this house?"

"My father," she replied, "I was then but five years old, and that age must in itself testify to my virginity."

"Well, my daughter," said the Prior, "have you not since that time lost this flower?"

She swore that she had kept it, and that she had had no hindrance in doing so except from himself. Whereto he replied that he could not believe it, and that the matter required proof.

"What proof," she asked, "would you have?"

"The same as from the others," said the Prior; "for as I am visitor of souls, even so am I visitor of bodies also. Your abbesses and prioresses have all pa.s.sed through my hands, and you need have no fear if I visit your virginity. Wherefore throw yourself upon the bed, and lift the forepart of your garments over your face."

"You have told me so much of your wicked love for me," Sister Marie replied in wrath, "that I think you seek rather to rob me of my virginity than to visit it. So understand that I shall never consent."

Thereupon he said to her that she was excommunicated for refusing him the obedience which Holy Church commanded, and that, if she did not consent, he would dishonour her before the whole Chapter by declaring the evil that he knew of between herself and the confessor.

But with fearless countenance she replied--

"He that knows the hearts of His servants shall give me as much honour in His presence as you can give me shame in the presence of men; and since your wickedness goes so far, I would rather it wreaked its cruelty upon me than its evil pa.s.sion; for I know that G.o.d is a just judge."

Then the Prior departed and a.s.sembled the whole Chapter, and, causing Sister Marie to appear on her knees before him, he said to her with wondrous malignity--

"Sister Marie, it grieves me to see that the good counsels I have given you have been of no effect, and to find you fallen into such evil ways that, contrary to my wont, I must needs lay a penance upon you. I have examined your confessor concerning certain crimes with which he is charged, and he has confessed to me that he has abused your person in the place where the witnesses say that they saw him. And so I command that, whereas I had formerly raised you to honourable rank as Mistress of the Novices, you shall now be the lowest placed of all, and further, shall eat only bread and water on the ground, and in presence of all the Sisters, until you have shown sufficient penitence to receive forgiveness."

Sister Marie had been warned by one of her companions, who was acquainted with the whole matter, that if she made any reply displeasing to the Prior, he would put her _in pace_--that is, in perpetual imprisonment--and she therefore submitted to this sentence, raising her eyes to heaven, and praying Him who had enabled her to withstand sin, to grant her patience for the endurance of tribulation. The Prior of St.

Martin's further commanded that for the s.p.a.ce of three years she should neither speak with her mother or kinsfolk when they came to see her, nor send any letters save such as were written in community.

The miscreant then went away and returned no more, and for a long time the unhappy maiden continued in the tribulation that I have described.

But her mother, who loved her best of all her children, was much astonished at receiving no tidings from her; and told one of her sons, who was a prudent and honourable gentleman, (6) that she thought her daughter was dead, and that the nuns were hiding it from her in order that they might receive the yearly payment. She, therefore, begged him to devise some means of seeing his sister.

6 It is conjectured by M. Lacroix that this "prudent and honourable gentleman," Mary Heroet's brother, was Antoine Heroet or Herouet, alias La Maisonneuve, who at one time was a valet and secretary to Queen Margaret, and so advanced himself in life that he died Bishop of Digne in 1544. He was the author of _La Parfaite Amie, L'Androgyne, and De n'aimer point sans etre aime_, poems of a semi-metaphysical, semi- amorous character such as might have come from Margaret's own pen. Whether he was Mary Heroet's brother or not, it is at least probable that he was her relative.-B. J. and L.

He went forthwith to the convent, where he met with the wonted excuses, being told that for three years his sister had not stirred from her bed.

But this did not satisfy him, and he swore that, if he did not see her, he would climb over the walls and force his way into the convent.

Thereupon, being in great fear, they brought his sister to him at the grating, though the Abbess stood so near that she could not tell her brother aught that was not heard. But she had prudently set down in writing all that I have told you, together with a thousand others of the Prior's devices to deceive her, which 'twould take too long to relate.

Yet I must not omit to mention that at the time when her aunt was Abbess, the Prior, thinking that his ugliness was the cause of her refusal, had caused Sister Marie to be tempted by a handsome young monk, in the hope that if she yielded to this man through love, he himself might afterwards obtain her through fear. The young monk aforesaid spoke to her in a garden with gestures too shameful to be mentioned, whereat the poor maiden ran to the Abbess, who was talking with the Prior, and cried out--

"Mother, they are not monks, but devils, who visit us here!"

Thereupon the Prior, in great fear of discovery, began to laugh, and said--

"a.s.suredly, mother, Sister Marie is right."

Then, taking Sister Marie by the hand, he said to her in presence of the Abbess--

"I had heard that Sister Marie spoke very well, and so constantly that she was deemed to be worldly-minded. For this reason I constrained myself, contrary to my natural inclination, to speak to her in the way that worldly men speak to women--at least in books, for in point of experience I am as ignorant as I was on the day when I was born.

Thinking, however, that only my years and ugliness led her to discourse in so virtuous a fas.h.i.+on, I commanded my young monk to speak to her as I myself had done, and, as you see, she has virtuously resisted him.

So highly, therefore, do I think of her prudence and virtue, that henceforward she shall rank next after you and shall be Mistress of the Novices, to the intent that her excellent disposition may ever increase in virtue."

This act, with many others, was done by this worthy monk during the three years that he was in love with the nun. She, however, as I have said, gave her brother in writing, through the grating, the whole story of her pitiful fortunes; and this her brother brought to her mother, who came, overwhelmed with despair, to Paris. Here she found the Queen of Navarre, only sister to the King, and showing her the piteous story, said--

"Madam, trust no more in these hypocrites. I thought that I had placed my daughter within the precincts of Paradise, or on the high road thither, whereas I have placed her in the precincts of h.e.l.l, and in the hands of the vilest devils imaginable. The devils, indeed, do not tempt us unless temptation be our pleasure, but these men will take by force when they cannot win by love."

The Queen of Navarre was in great concern, for she trusted wholly in the Prior of St. Martin's, to whose care she had committed her sisters-inlaw, the Abbesses of Montivilliers and Caen. (7) On the other hand, the enormity of the crime so horrified her and made her so desirous of avenging the innocence of this unhappy maiden, that she communicated the matter to the King's Chancellor, who happened also to be Legate in France. (8)

7 The abbess of Montivilliers was Catherine d'Albret, daughter of John d'Albret, King of Navarre and sister of Queen Margaret's husband, Henry. At first a nun at the abbey of St. Magdalen at Orleans, she became twenty-eighth abbess of Montivilliers near Havre. She was still living in 1536.

(_Gallia Christ_., vol. xi. col. 285). The abbess of Caen was Magdalen d'Albret, Catherine's sister. She took the veil at Fontevrault in 1527, subsequently became thirty-third abbess of the Trinity at Caen, and died in November 1532.

(_Gallia Christ_., vol. xi. col. 436).--L.

8 This is the famous Antony Duprat, Francis I.'s favourite minister. Born in 1463, he became Chancellor in 1515, and his wife dying soon afterwards, he took orders, with the result that he was made Archbishop of Sens and Cardinal. It was in 1530 that he was appointed Papal Legate in France, so that the incidents related in this tale cannot have occurred at an earlier date. Duprat died in July 1535, of grief, it is said, because Francis I. would not support him in his ambitious scheme to secure possession of the papal see, as successor to Clement VII.-B. J. and Ed.

The Prior was sent for, but could find nothing to plead except that he was seventy years of age, and addressing himself to the Queen of Navarre he begged that, for all the good she had ever wished to do him, and in token of all the services he had rendered or had desired to render her, she would be pleased to bring these proceedings to a close, and he would acknowledge that Sister Marie was a pearl of honour and chast.i.ty.

On hearing this, the Queen of Navarre was so astonished that she could make no reply, but went off and left him there. The unhappy man then withdrew in great confusion to his monastery, where he would suffer none to see him, and where he lived only one year afterwards. And Sister Marie Heroet, now reputed as highly as she deserved to be, by reason of the virtues that G.o.d had given her, was withdrawn from the convent of Gif, where she had endured so much evil, and was by the King made Abbess of the the convent of Giy (9) near Montargis.

9 Giy-les-Nonains, a little village on the river Ouanne, at two leagues and a half from Montargis, department of the Loiret.--L.

This convent she reformed, and there she lived like one filled with the Spirit of G.o.d, whom all her life long she ever praised for having of His good grace restored to her both honour and repose.

"There, ladies, you have a story which clearly proves the words of the Gospel, that 'G.o.d hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and things which are despised of men hath G.o.d chosen to bring to nought the glory of those who think themselves something but are in truth nothing.' (10) And remember, ladies, that without the grace of G.o.d there is no good at all in man, just as there is no temptation that with His a.s.sistance may not be overcome. This is shown by the abas.e.m.e.nt of the man who was accounted just, and the exaltation of her whom men were willing to deem a wicked sinner. Thus are verified Our Lord's words, 'Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'" (11)

10 I Corinthians i. 27, 28, slightly modified.

11 St. Luke xiv. 11 and xviii. 14.

"Alas," said Oisille, "how many virtuous persons did that Prior deceive!

For I saw people put more trust in him than even in G.o.d."

"_I_ should not have done so," said Nomerfide, "for such is my horror of monks that I could not confess to one. I believe they are worse than all other men, and never frequent a house without leaving disgrace or dissension behind them."

"There are good ones among them," said Oisille, "and they ought not to be judged by the bad alone; but the best are those that least often visit laymen's houses and women."

"You are right," said Ennasuite. "The less they are seen, the less they are known, and therefore the more highly are they esteemed; for companions.h.i.+p with them shows what they really are."

"Let us say no more about them," said Nomerfide, "and see to whom Geburon will give his vote."

"I shall give it," said he, "to Madame Oisille, that she may tell us something to the credit of Holy Church." (12)