breasts
and elsewhere, as familiarly as could be."

"Eh! gossip, eh!" the good woman replied, "'twas myself."

"Nay, gossip," said the other, "I saw them afterwards doing something in
the snow that to my mind is neither seemly nor right."

"Gossip," returned the good woman, "I have told you, and I tell you
again, that it was myself and none other who did all that you say, for
my good husband and I play thus familiarly together. And, I pray you,
be not scandalised at this, for you know that we are bound to please our
husbands."

So the worthy gossip went away, more wishful to possess such a husband
for herself than she had been to talk about the husband of her friend;
and when the upholsterer came home again his wife told him the whole
story.

"Now look you, sweetheart," replied the upholsterer, "if you were not
a woman of virtue and sound understanding we should long ago have been
separated the one from the other. But I hope that God will continue to
preserve us in our mutual love, to His own glory and our happiness."

"Amen to that, my dear," said the good woman, "and I hope that on my
part you will never find aught to blame." (3)

3 This tale is accounted by most critics and commentators
to be the best in the _Heptameron_. Dunlop thinks it may
have been borrowed from a _fabliau_ composed by some
_Trouvere_ who had travelled in the East, and points out
that it corresponds with the story of the _Shopkeeper s
Wife_ in Nakshebi's Persian Tales (_Tooti Nameh_). Had it
been brought to France, however, in the manner suggested it
would, like other tales, have found its way into the works
of many sixteenth-century story-writers besides Queen
Margaret. Such, however, is not the case, and curiously
enough, so far as we can find, the tale, as given in the
_Heptameron_, was never imitated until La Fontaine wrote his
_Servante Justifiee (Contes, livre_ ii. No. vi.), in the
opening lines of which he expressly acknowledges his
indebtedness to the Queen of Navarre.--Ed.

"Unbelieving indeed, ladies, must be the man who, after hearing this
true story, should hold you to be as crafty as men are; though, if we
are not to wrong either, and to give both man and wife the praise they
truly deserve, we must needs admit that the better of the two was worth
naught."

"The man," said Parlamente, "was marvellously wicked, for he deceived
his servant on the on