D. (Tale XXX., Page 191).

Various French, English and Italian authors have written imitations of this tale, concerning which Dunlop writes as follows in his History of Fiction:—­

“The plot of Bandello’s thirty-fifth story is the same as that of Horace Walpole’s comedy The Mysterious Mother, and of the Queen of Navarre’s thirtieth tale.  The earlier portion will be found also in Masuccio’s twenty-third tale:  but the second part, relating to the marriage, occurs only in Bandello’s work and the Heptameron.  It is not likely, however, that the French or the Italian novelist borrowed from one another.  The tales of Bandello were first published in 1554, and as the Queen of Navarre died in 1549, it is improbable that she ever had an opportunity of seeing them.  On the other hand, the work of the Queen was not printed till 1558, nine years after her death, so it is not likely that any part of it was copied by Bandello, whose tales had been edited some years before.”

Walpole, it may be mentioned, denied having had any knowledge either of the Heptameron or of Bandello when he wrote The Mysterious Mother, which was suggested to him, he declared, by a tale he had heard when very young, of a lady who had waited on Archbishop Tillotson with a story similar to that which is told by Queen Margaret’s heroine to the Legate of Avignon.  According to Walpole, Tillotson’s advice was identical with that given by the Legate.

Dunlop mentions that a tale of this character is given in Byshop’s Blossoms (vol. xi.); and other authors whose writings contain similar stories are:  Giovani Brevio, Rime e Prose vulgari, Roma, 1545 (Novella iv.); Desfontaine’s L’Inceste innocent, histoire veritable, Paris, 1644 5 Tommaso Grappulo, or Grappolino, Il Convito Borghesiano, Londra, 1800 (Novella vii.); Luther, Colloquia Mens alia (article on auricular confession); and Masuccio de Solerac, Novellino, Ginevra, 1765 (Novella xxiii.).

Curiously enough, Bandello declares that the story was related to him by a lady of Navarre (Queen Margaret?) as having occurred in that country, while Julio de Medrano, a Spanish author of the sixteenth century, asserts that it was told to him in the Bourbonnais as being actual fact, and that he positively saw the house where the lady’s son and his wife resided; but on the other hand we find the tale related, in its broad lines, in Amadis de Gaule as being an old-time legend, and in proof of this, it figures in an ancient French poem of the life of St. Gregory, the MS. of which still exists at Tours, and was printed in 1854.

In support of the theory that the tale is based on actual fact, the following passage from Millin’s Antiquites Nationales (vol. iii. f. xxviii. p. 6) is quoted—­

“In the middle of the nave of the collegial church of Ecouis, in the cross aisle, was found a white marble slab on which was inscribed this epitaph:—­