Page:The Book of the Duke of True Lovers - 1908.djvu/148

116 vexed if it were not noised abroad that they have much greater intimacy and authority with you than have the others, and if they do not openly proclaim your secrets, they hint at them by means of divers covert signs, the which they think are duly observed. Good God, what a slave is the lady, and any other woman in the like case, who dares not reprove or blame her serving men or women, even if she sees that they behave them very ill, for that she perceives herself to be in their power, and that they have risen up against her in such arrogance that she dares not utter a word, and is thus constrained to endure at their hands that which she would not endure from any other! And what, think you, do those say who see and pay heed to this? These only pay attention to that which they see, and be sure that they ofttimes whisper it abroad, and if it chances that the lady is angered, or sends away her servant, God knows that all will be revealed, and made known everywhere. And yet it ofttimes happens that they are, and have been, the means and the cause of bringing into being this love, the which they have encouraged with zeal and great diligence, in order to gain for themselves