[Illustration:  108.jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration:  109.jpg The Merchant transferring his Caresses from the Daughter to the Mother]

[The Merchant transferring his Caresses from the Daughter to the Mother]

[Illustration:  110.jpg Page Image]

TALE VII.

     By the craft and subtlety of a merchant an old woman was
     deceived and the honour of her daughter saved.

In the city of Paris there lived a merchant who was in love with a young girl of his neighbourhood, or, to speak more truly, she was more in love with him than he with her.  For the show he made to her of love and devotion was but to conceal a loftier and more honourable passion.  However, she suffered herself to be deceived, and loved him so much that she had quite forgotten the way to refuse.

After the merchant had long taken trouble to go where he could see her, he at last made her come whithersoever it pleased himself.  Her mother discovered this, and being a very virtuous woman, she forbade her daughter ever to speak to the merchant on pain of being sent to a nunnery.  But the girl, whose love for the merchant was greater than her fear of her mother, went after him more than ever.

It happened one day, when she was in a closet all alone, the merchant came in to her, and finding himself in a place convenient for the purpose, fell to conversing with her as privily as was possible.  But a maid-servant, who had seen him go in, ran and told the mother, who betook herself thither in great wrath.  When the girl heard her coming, she said, weeping, to the merchant—­“Alas! sweetheart, the love that I bear you will now cost me dear.  Here comes my mother, who will know for certain what she has always feared and suspected.”

The merchant, who was not a bit confused by this accident, straightway left the girl and went to meet the mother.  Stretching out his arms, he hugged her with all his might, and, with the same ardour with which he had begun to entertain the daughter, threw the poor old woman on to a small bed.  She was so taken aback at being thus treated that she could find nothing to say but—­“What do you want?  Are you dreaming?”

For all that he ceased not to press her as closely as if she had been the fairest maiden in the world, and had she not cried out so loudly that her serving-men and women came to her aid, she would have gone by the same road as she feared her daughter was treading.

However, the servants dragged the poor old woman by main force out of the merchant’s arms, and she never knew for what reason he had thus used her.  Meanwhile, her daughter took refuge in a house hard by where a wedding was going on.  Since then she and the merchant have ofttimes laughed together at the expense of the old woman, who was never any the wiser.