Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/43

 When this duke that I speak of was come almost to the town in all his pomp and happiness, as he cast his eye on one side he was ware how there was kneeling in the highway a company of ladies, two and two in order, clad in black, making such a cry and such a woe that no creature living in this world heard such another lamentation; and they never stopped their cries till they had caught the reins of his bridle. "What folk be ye that at my home-coming disturb my festival so with cries?" quoth Theseus. "Have ye so great ill-will toward my glory, that ye lament thus and wail? Or who hath insulted or injured you? Tell me if it may be amended, and why ye be thus clothed in black."

The eldest lady of them all spake, after she had swooned with face so deathlike that it was piteous to see and hear: "Lord, to whom Fortune hath granted victory, and to live as a conqueror, your glory and honour grieve us not, but we beg for mercy and succour. Show thy grace upon our distress and woe—of thy nobleness let fall some drop of pity upon us unhappy women. For truly, lord, there is not one of us all but hath been a duchess or a queen; now are we poor wretches, as thou seest, thanks to Fortune and her false wheel that unto no rank assureth wellbeing. And verily, lord, here in the temple of the Goddess Clemence we have been waiting this whole fortnight against your coming. Now help us, lord, sith it lieth in thy power. I, wretched woman, who thus weep and wail was whilom wife to King Capaneus, who died at Thebes, cursed be that day! And all we who be in this plight and make all this lament lost our husbands at that town while the siege lay about it. Yet now, alack! the old Creon who is lord of Thebes, full of vice and iniquity, hath done scorn to the dead bodies of all our lords, and