two partridges on a Friday, and how he told his servants that he had
converted them by his prayers into fish--as will more plainly be related
below._

STORY THE HUNDREDTH AND LAST -- THE CHASTE LOVER.

_Of a rich merchant of the city of Genoa, who married a fair damsel,
who owing to the absence of her husband, sent for a wise clerk--a young,
fit, and proper man--to help her to that of which she had need; and
of the fast that he caused her to make--as you will find more plainly
below._

[Illustration: contents.jpg Contents]

[Illustration: intro.jpg Introduction]

*****

INTRODUCTION

The highest living authority on French Literature--Professor George
Saintsbury--has said:

"The _Cent Nouvelles_ is undoubtedly the first work of literary prose in
French, and the first, moreover, of a long and most remarkable series of
literary works in which French writers may challenge all comers with the
certainty of victory. The short prose tale of a comic character is the
one French literary product the pre-eminence and perfection of which it
is impossible to dispute, and the prose tale first appears to advantage
in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. The subjects are by no means new.
They are simply the old themes of the _fabliaux_ treated in the old way.
The novelty is in the application of prose to such a purpose, and in the
crispness, the fluency, and the elegance, of the prose used."

Besides the literary merits which the eminent critic has pointed out,
the stories give us curious glimpses of life in the 15th Century. We get
a genuine view of the social condition of the nobility and the middle
classes, and are pleasantly surprised to learn from the mouths of the
nobles themselves that the peasant was not the down-trodden serf that we
should have expected to find him a century after the Jacquerie, and 350
years before the Revolution.

In fact there is an atmosphere of tolerance, not to say _bonhommie_
about these stories which is very remarkable when we consider under what
circumstances they were told, and by whom, and to whom.

This seems to have struck M. Lenient, a French critic, who says:

"Generally the incidents and personages belong to the _bourgeoisee_;
there is nothing chivalric, nothing wonderful; no dreamy lovers,
romantic dames, fairies, or enchanters. Noble dames, bourgeois, nuns,
knights, merchants, monks, and peasants mutually dupe each other. The
lord deceives the miller's wife by im