character, and is represented as fond of his wife, Parlamente, but
a decided libertine and of a somewhat rough and ruthless general
character--points which have made the interpreters sure that he must be
Henry d'Albret. The others, except that Geburon is, as had been said,
older than his companions, and that Simontault sighs vainly after
Parlamente, are merely walking gentlemen of the time, accomplished
enough, but not individual. The women are much more distinct and show a
woman's hand. Oisille is, as our own seventeenth-century ancestors would
have said, ancient and sober, very devout, regarded with great respect
by the rest of the company, and accepted as a kind of mistress both of
the revels and of more serious matters, but still a woman of the
world, and content to make only an occasional and mild protest against
tolerably free stories and sentiments. Parlamente, considerably younger,
and though virtuous, not by any means ignorant of or wholly averse to
the devotion of Simontault, indulging occasionally in a kind of mild
conjugal sparring with her husband, Hircan, but apparently devoted to
him, full of religion and romance and refinement at once, is a very
charming character, resembling Madame de Sevigne as she may have been
in her unknown or hardly known youth, when husband and lovers alike were
attracted by the flame of her beauty and charm, only to complain that
it froze and did not burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for her
dead husband, but appears decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughty
damsel, disdainful of poor folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap,
a Catherine Seyton of the generation before Catherine herself, the
feminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too free-spoken for
prudish modern taste, a very delightful girl.

Now when this good company had assembled at Serrance and told each other
their misadventures, the waters on inquiry seemed to be out more widely
and more dangerously than before, so that it was impossible to think of
going farther for the time. They deliberated accordingly how they should
employ themselves, and, after allowing, on the proposal of Oisille, an
ample space for sacred exercises, they resolved that every day, after
dinner and an interval, they should assemble in a meadow on the bank of
the Gave at midday and tell stories. The device is carried out with
such success that the monks steal behind the hedges to hear them, and an
occasional postponement of vespers takes