Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/120

 best of all men. Keep them well now, for if ye will, ye can. Look well that ye give assent unto no vice, lest ye be damned for your wicked mind, for whosoever doth, in sooth, is a traitor. And pay heed to that I shall say: of all treasons the sovereign plague is when a wight betrayeth innocence. Ye fathers and eke ye mothers, that have children, be it one or two, yours is all the charge to watch over them while they be under your governance. Beware, by the ensample of your living or by your neglect of chastisement, that they perish not; for I dare well say that if they do, ye shall rue it dearly. Under a soft and negligent shepherd, the wolf hath torn in pieces many a sheep and lamb. One ensample sufficeth now, for I must turn again to my matter.

This maid, of whom I will tell this tale, so kept herself that she needed no mistress. For in her living, as in a book, maidens might read every good word or act that belongeth to a virtuous maid; she was so prudent and so kind. Wherefore the fame sprang out far on every side both of her beauty and her goodness; that throughout that land everyone praised her that loved virtue, save envy alone that is sorry for the weal of another man, and glad of his sorrow and his misfortune. (The doctor, Saint Augustine, maketh this description of envy.) This maid on a day went to a temple with her dear mother, as is the wont of young maidens.

Now there was a justice then in that town that was governor of that country. And so befell this judge cast his eyes upon this maid, considering her full closely as she came past where he was. Straightway his heart changed and his mood, he was so caught with the beauty of this maiden, and full privily he said to himself, "This maid shall be mine in spite of any man."