ptation, if
there were many scenes in real life like that described, for example, in
the romance of _Amis et Amiles_, where the good knight is pursued by a
demoiselle who positively insists on loving him.

The hours of the lady's day were regulated, we may suppose, by the
proverb which says:

"Lever a cinq, diner a neuf,
Souper a cinq, coucher a neuf,
Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf."

(Rising at five, dining at nine, supping at five, sleeping at nine,
makes one live to ninety-and-nine.) Sometimes, instead of rising at five
and dining at nine, it is rising at six and dining at ten, supping at
six and to bed by ten; but we are not, in this case, promised the
ninety-and-nine years of life. Dinner between nine and ten, and other
meals at suitable hours, seems to have been the rule in France even
until the sixteenth century. Breakfast was a very uncertain meal (think
of breakfast before a nine o'clock dinner!), but supper was almost as
elaborate as dinner. As candles and lamps were very expensive, being
regarded as almost a luxury, there was some reason in the early hours
for meals. For the same reason, in summer, when there were no fires to
supply light, most people went to bed as soon as it grew dark. The lady
of the house is told, in a French housekeeper's book of the fourteenth
century, to see that the candles are not wasted. She must go around to
see that all fires are out and the house properly closed and that the
servants are in bed. These latter are to place the candle allowed them
on the floor, at a safe distance from the bed, and the lady must take
care "to teach them to put out their candle with the mouth, or with the
hand before getting in bed, and not by throwing their chemises over
it"--servants, mistress, and all, be it remembered, slept naked.

The kind of life we have been describing, the washing of hands, the
plentiful food, the wine, the amusements, the rich costumes--all these
are things belonging to the lady. The woman of the poorer classes, the
laboring woman, had no such comforts; lucky was she, indeed, if she had
enough of coarse food and coarse clothing for herself and children. The
mediaeval moralists noted the inequality of the classes, and one of them
compares the fare of the rich, which we have mentioned, with that of the
poor: "There was not one among them, great or small, who did not have a
fine appetite for dry (black) bread, and garlic, and salt; nor did they
ea