Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume I.djvu/342

Rh tell you then," the Queen went on, without keeping him longer in suspense, "that you are standing above the tomb and the body of poor Mlle. de La Roche, whom erst you did love so fondly; she is interred beneath this spot. Now seeing that our souls do possess feeling after our death, how can we doubt that this excellent creature, dead but lately, was moved so soon as ever you came over her? And if you did not mark it by reason of the grossness of the tomb, no doubt for this cause was she the more stirred and moved in herself. Now forasmuch as 'tis a right pious office to have memory of the dead, and specially of them we have loved, I do beseech you give her a Pater noster and an Ave Maria and a de Profundis to boot, and sprinkle her resting place with holy water; so shall you win the name of a very faithful lover and a good Christian. And to this end will I now leave you," and so quits him and hies her away. My brother, (who is since dead), failed not to perform what she had said, and then went to see her again; whereupon she did somewhat take him to task and rally him, for she was familiar with folk,—in a good sense that is,—and had graceful skill in gentle mockery.

Such then was the view this Princess did hold, but more by way of witty conceit and gentle sentiment than from actual belief, as I think.

These gentle words of the Princess do further remind me of an epitaph over a courtesan that is buried at the Church of our Lady of the People (del Popolo) at Rome, which doth read thus: Quaesco, viator, ne me diutius calcatam amplius calces, "To him that passeth by: 'I have been kicked and spurned enough in my lifetime; spurn me no more.'" The Latin expression hath more