Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/314

Rh taken part in the celebration at all, she would either faint away altogether, or would gaze at him with as much horror and detestation as though he were the plague. To enter Paris, nay! to look at it from anywhere in the neighbourhood within two miles, was not to be thought of, for neither eyes nor heart could bear the sight. To see it, say I?—why! she could not bear so much as to hear it named. At the end of two years, however, she did think better, and hies her away willingly enough to greet the good town, and visit the same, and drive to the Palace in her coach. Yet rather than pass by the Rue de la Huchette, where her husband had been killed, she would have thrown herself headlong into fire and destruction rather than into the said street,—being herein like the serpent, which according to Pliny, doth so abhor the shade of the ash as that 'twill rather adventure into the most blazing fire than under this tree so hateful is it to the creature.

In fact, the late King, the then reigning King's brother, was used to declare he had never seen a woman so desperate and haggard at her loss and grief as this lady, and that 'twould end by their having to bring her down and hood her, as they do with haggard falcons. But after some while he found she was prettily enough tamed of her own accord, in such sort she would suffer herself to be hooded quite quietly and privily, without any bringing down but her own will. Then after some while more, what must she be at but embrace her Paris with open arms and regard its pleasures with a very favourable eye, parading hither and thither through its streets, traversing the city up and down, and measuring its length and breadth this way and that, without ever a thought of any vow to the