Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/184

Rh though the only force left to him lay in flight. And being shut in his chamber, not wishing to let her go without some resolution taken, he wrote to her a few words in Spanish, which I have found so excellent in substance that I have not chosen to diminish their grace by any rendering of mine; and these words he sent to her by a little novice, who found her still in the chapel, in such despair that, had it been lawful for her to take the veil in that monastery, she would have stayed. But, on seeing the writing, which said, "Volvete don venísti, anima mi, que en las tristas vidas es la mia," she, knowing by these words that all her hopes had failed, determined to believe the counsel of him and of her friends, and returned to her own home, to lead there as melancholy a life as her lover spent austerer in his monastery.

"Thus you see, ladies, the vengeance this gentleman took on his hard-hearted love, who, thinking to make an experiment of his truth, drove him to despair, in such a manner that, when she would, she could not have him again."

"I am sorry," said Nomerfide, "that he did not doff his cowl to go and marry her, for then, methinks, there would have been a perfect marriage."

"Of a truth," said Simontault, "I think he was very wise; for who has well considered the marriage state will not esteem it less vexatious than an austere devotion, and he, so greatly weakened by fasts and abstinences, feared to take upon him such a life-long burden."

"It seems to me," said Hircan, "she did very wrong to so weak a man in trying to tempt him with marriage: that is too much for the strongest man in