Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/171

Rh demand back of his former mistress all he had ever given her of fairest and most rich and rare.

This was a very sore chagrin to the lady; yet was she of so great and high an heart, albeit she was no Princess, though of one of the best houses in France, as that she did send him back all that was most fair and exquisite, wherein was a beautiful mirror with the picture of the said Prince. But first, for to decorate the same still better, she did take a pen and ink, and did scrawl inside a great pair of horns for him right in the mid of the forehead. Then handing the whole to the gentleman, the Prince's messenger, she spake thuswise to him: "Here, my friend, take this to your master, and tell him I do hereby send him back all he ever gave me, and that I have taken away nor added naught, unless it be something he hath himself added thereto since. And tell yonder fair Princess, his wife, which hath worked on him so strongly to demand back all his presents of me, that if a certain great Lord (naming him by name, and myself do know who it was) had done the like by her mother, and had asked back and taken from her what he had many a time and oft given her for sleeping with him, by way of love gifts and amorous presents, she would be as poor in gewgaws and jewels as ever a young maid at Court. Tell her, that for her own head, the which is now so loaded at the expense of this same Lord and her mother's belly, she would then have to go scour the gardens every morning for to pluck flowers to deck it withal, instead of jewelry. Well! let her e'en make what show and use she will of them; I do freely give them up to her." Any which hath known this fair lady will readily understand she was such an one as to have said as much; and herself did tell me