Heptameron

The first story is told by Simontaut to illustrate the foul deeds of women upon men. A procurator named Saint-Aignan married a woman “who was more beautiful than she was virtuous” and who is also involved with Bishop of Sées (71). The woman becomes enamored of a young man named du Mesnil, and they become lovers. When du Mesnil discovers she was also involved with the Bishop, he ends their relationship. Enraged by the rejection, she plans her revenge, eventually setting a trap for him through which he is murdered by her husband and another. They attempt to cover up the murder, but servants testify against them, and having fled to England, they are sentenced to death in absentia. After some time, Saint-Aignan negotiates their return to France with the help of the King of England. Upon return, Saint-Aignan begins to associate with a sorcerer named Gallery, who, with enchanted dolls, casts a spell for the goodwill of the King and another, while cursing du Mesnil’s father, the King’s sister, and his own wife with death. The wife herself overhears and passes this information through the grapevine until it reaches the King himself, who sentences the two to death. The King’s sister gets the sentence commuted, and the husband and Gallery spend the rest of their lives in prison, while the wife continues her immoral life until death.

The second story tells of a mule-driver in the service of the Queen of Navarre (Marguerite de Navarre). While he is away to collect his pay, his servant declares his love to the mule-driver’s wife, and she rejects him. Later that evening, he attempts to rape her while she is sleeping, but his love has now changed, and he attacks her, as “his love was no more than animal lust, and he would have understood the language his mules spoke better than he understood the virtuous appeals to reason that she now made” (79-80). While she attempts to fight back, trying to preserve her chastity, he stabs her repeatedly with his sword. She turns her attention to God when she feels death is near. He rapes her as she dies and then flees, never to be found. A young servant girl hiding under the bed runs for help; the wife is administered last rites before she dies, and her husband returns home, shocked and dismayed to find her dead.

The third story is set in Naples at the court of King Alfonso, where a highly regarded nobleman marries a young woman who is his equal. The King notices this woman at carnival and falls in love with her, finds a reason to send her husband away, and seduces her while he is gone. When the husband discovers what the King has done, he decides to keep quiet, as “it was better to put up with the affront, than to risk his life for the sake of a woman who apparently no longer loved him” (84). Realizing jealousy can easily manipulate women, he approaches the Queen and reveals her husband’s affair to her. Despite her initial misgivings, he convinces her to begin an affair with him as revenge. After some time, with both couples happily carrying on together, the King remarks on a pair of antlers hanging in the young man’s home, noting “that the horns went very well with the home” (88), implying that the man is a cuckhold. In response, the man has an inscription placed under the horns, leading the king to understand he knows he has been cuckolded but is untroubled by it. Both affairs continue happily for years; the King never discovers the Queen’s infidelity, and they each end their affairs when “at length old age brought them to order” (88).

Story 4 tells of a nobleman who falls in love with the widowed, high-born sister of a young prince, whose household he is attached to. While he is initially in good standing with the woman, he attempts to start a liaison with her, and she rejects him. From there he resorts to trickery to try to take her by force; one night, when she and her brother are visiting the gentleman’s household, he enters her room by a trap door and tries to join her in bed. The room is dark, and he is unrecognizable, but she fights back fiercely, scratching his face and body, and he flees without succeeding. He is so shamed by this encounter that he hides the next day for fear of recognition by his wounds. The lady is enraged and suspecting he is her attacker, but her lady-in-waiting dissuades her from publicly shaming him, warning doing so could backfire on her honor as many may not believe her innocence, saying that the lady’s honor, “which up till now has been such that you’ve been able to hold your head high wherever you went, would be put in doubt wherever this story was heard” (94). Instead, the lady gradually cuts off the gentleman, taking more caution in entertaining suitors. The gentleman finds himself worse off than he started, completely rejected by the object of his love.

In Story 5, a boat woman in Coulon is ferrying two Franciscan friars across the river when they decide to rape her. However, she is smart and “as sensible and shrewd as they were vicious and stupid” (98), and she devises a trick to outsmart the two clergymen. She feigns interest and makes a deal with them—first that they will keep the act a secret, and second that they will have sex with her one at a time—which they readily agree to. Smartly separating the two men, she leaves one on an island, promising to return once the second monk has finished with her on another island. When the second monk goes to find a comfortable spot, she jumps back into the boat and sails away to alert the village and her husband, who take the friars and publicly humiliate them until they are rescued by the Father Superior.

In Story 6, a well-liked valet de chambre of Charles, Duke of Alençon, who is blind in one eye, is often away from home. His younger wife, feeling neglected, begins an affair with a young man. When news of the affair reaches the husband, he tries to catch them in the act, surprising the wife by returning early. The lover is trapped in the house with her, but she tricks her husband, telling him she dreamt he could see again out of both eyes, and she tries to “test” whether this is true by covering up his good eye. While the husband is temporary blinded, the lover sneaks out. The husband realizes he has been tricked and leaves her, but he eventually forgives his persistent wife.

In Story 7, a merchant in Paris pretends to love a young neighbor girl to cover up his more “exalted and honorable passion” for someone else (105). The girl’s mother discovers this affair and forbids the girl from seeing him. However, the two continue their tryst. One day, the merchant is visiting the girl in her home, and a maid runs to tell the mother, who comes to punish the two. When they hear her coming, the clever merchant decides to trick the mother and pounces on her as if she is the object of his affection. The mother’s confusion and screams draw the servants to her aid, and the daughter sneaks out of the house. The merchant and daughter later have a good laugh over his successful subterfuge.

Story 8 tells of a man named Bornet, who is married to a good woman, but who, for the sake of variety, wants to sleep with the chambermaid. The chambermaid refuses him and asks the lady of the house to let her return home to her parents to avoid his advances. The wife has a different idea, convincing the maid to feign interest so that the she may switch places with her and catch him in the act. When the husband learns the maid is agreeable, he tells a friend, inviting him to partake after he has finished with her. As planned, the wife goes to the girl’s bed and pretends to be her, and the husband falls for it: “When he got in with her, she did not act like a wife, but like a bashful young girl, and he was not in the slightest suspicious” (109). After making love for some time, the husband leaves and rejoins his friend, inviting him to partake of the “maid.” The friend does so, and unbeknownst to both, makes love to the man’s wife while she thinks her husband has come back for more. He leaves with her wedding ring in the morning and shows it to Bornet, who panics, realizing he has cuckolded himself. At breakfast, the wife knows she has her husband trapped, and when he asks about her missing ring, she berates him, as she thinks he took it from her. He returns the ring to her, dismayed because he failed in seducing the maid, and worse, he caused his own, virtuous wife to cheat on him. Bornet tries to keep the situation a secret, but eventually it circulates, and he is publicly humiliated.

In Story 9, a poor but virtuous young nobleman falls in love with a lady of higher station. While the lady’s mother recognizes his worth, the family frowns upon their courtship, so the mother asks him to stop seeing her daughter. When he hears that the lady might become engaged to another man, his health fades until he is on his death bed. The mother takes pity on him and visits him with her daughter, trying to raise his spirits so he will not die of a broken heart. He is too far gone, and he dies after professing his love, while the girl, realizing she has lost her love, is devastated: “The love she had always felt but kept concealed broke forth now with such vehemence that her mother and servants were able only with difficulty to separate their united bodies” (118). Thereafter the girl shows her love for him openly and marries another but never finds happiness.

Parlamente concludes the first day with Story 10, the tale of Florida and Amador. Set in Spain, Florida is the daughter of a countess connected to the Queen’s court. When Florida is 12, she attracts the attention of Amador, a highly respected warrior who is about 18 years old. He recognizes her inherent virtue and decides he will love her despite their different stations and ages. They first meet when Florida agrees to help her childhood friend Avanturada marry Amador. However, for Amador, the marriage is a cover to get close to Florida, “no more than a convenient excuse to enable him to visit her on whom his mind constantly dwelled” (127), and he thus inserts himself into their household. Despite his being called to war regularly with long separations, Florida and Amador become close, with the former suspecting nothing: “she was as fond of Amador as it he had been her own brother” (128). To further conceal his love for her, he begins to make advances on a woman named Paulina, who can see through his ruse and wants to discover whom he truly loves. Eventually, he confesses his love to Florida so that she may know, and he may throw off Paulina’s suspicions. Amador asks Florida to be his lady, and he her servant, and while she is skeptical at first, she begins to feel love for him, too: “Deep within her heart she began to feel stirrings she had never felt before” (133).

The two are briefly happy together, but Amador is called off to war and is taken prisoner for two years by the King of Tunis. Meanwhile, the Countess arranges for Florida to be married to the Duke of Cardona. Florida reluctantly agrees and is further dismayed to hear another love interest, the son of the Infante of Fortune, is sick and dying. Amador eventually returns to Spain and is reunited with Florida, her family, and his wife, but then when he is called away again to war, his wife faints, falls down a flight of stairs, and dies from her injuries. Both Florida and Amador are devastated at the loss, and while embracing one night in their grief, Amador goes too far and begins “to pursue the path that leads to the forbidden goal of the lady’s honor” (140). Florida calls someone into the room, and he relents. She is outraged and shocked he would stain her honor, while he defends himself, reasoning that he deserves her more than her husband and that marriage has protected her: “You have a cover and your honor is safe” (141). She further laments that while she wanted to give him her whole heart, she now sees what he is capable of, and she tells him goodbye forever. He then tries to convince her it was just a trick, but she is not convinced, and though she still loves him, she breaks off their friendship.

Three to four years pass, and during their next meeting, he attempts to rape her, even though she has injured her own face to try to make herself less attractive to him. Sometime later, he begins another liaison with a lady named Loretta with the intention of regaining Florida’s favor, but while Florida warns him that Loretta’s husband is dangerously jealous, she does not welcome him back. Ultimately, in a battle against the Moors, Florida’s husband is killed, and Amador takes his own life rather than face capture and forced renunciation of his faith. Once she buries her husband, Florida ends her relations with men and enters the Convent of Jesus, taking “[Christ] as lover and as spouse who had delivered her from the violent love of Amador and from the misery of her life with her earthly husband” (152), living as a nun until her death.