her aunt, her cousin, and
her neighbour, "you are wrong, my dear! What do you ask? Do you expect
more? Who would not be satisfied with a husband so furnished? So help me
God I should deem myself very happy to have as much, or indeed less. Be
comforted and enjoy yourself in future! By God, you are better off than
any of us I believe."

The young bride, hearing all the women thus speak, replied, still
weeping loudly.

"There is a little ass in the house, hardly half a year old, and who has
an instrument as big, as thick, and as long as your arm,"--and so saying
she held her arm by the elbow and shook it up and down--"and my husband,
who is quite 24 years old has but that little bit he has shown you. Do
you think I ought to be satisfied?" Everyone began to laugh, and she to
weep the more, so that for a long time not a word was said by any of
the company. Then her mother took the girl aside, and said one thing and
another to her, and left her satisfied after a great deal of trouble.

That is the way with the girls in Germany--if God pleases it will soon
be the same also in France.

*****

STORY THE EIGHTY-FIRST -- BETWEEN TWO STOOLS. [81]

By Monseigneur De Waurin.

_Of a noble knight who was in love with a beautiful young married lady,
and thought himself in her good graces, and also in those of another
lady, her neighbour; but lost both as is afterwards recorded._

As all the stories of asses are now finished, I will relate shortly a
true story of a knight whom many of you noble lords have long known. It
is true that this knight was greatly in love--as is often the way with
young men--with a beautiful and noble young lady, who, in that part of
the country where she lived was renowned for her beauty. Nevertheless,
try what means he could to obtain her favours, and become her accepted
lover, he could not succeed--at which he was much displeased, seeing
that never was woman loved more ardently, loyally, and wholly than she
was. Nor should I omit to say that he did as much for her as ever
lover did for his lady, such as jousts, expensive habiliments,
etc.--nevertheless, as has been said, he found her always brusque and
averse, and showing him less love than she reasonably should, for she
knew for a fact that she was loyally and dearly loved by him. And,
to say truth, she was too harsh to him, which, it is to be believed,
proceeded from pride, of which she had too much--it might even be said,
with which sh