THE FIRST TEN TALES

Prologue
the fair Imperia
the venial sin
   how the good man Bruyn took A wife
   how the seneschal struggled with his wife’s modesty
   that which is only A venial sin
   how and by whom the said child was procured
   how the said love-sin was repented of and led to great mourning
the king’s sweetheart
the devil’s heir
the Merrie jests of king Louis the eleventh
the high constable’s wife
the maid of Thilouse
the brother-in-arms
the vicar of Azay-le-Rideau
the reproach
epilogue

Translatorspreface

When, in March, 1832, the first volume of the now famous Contes Drolatiques was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface, written in the publisher’s name, replied to those attacks which he anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment.  He claimed for his book the protection of all those to whom literature was dear, because it was a work of art—­and a work of art, in the highest sense of the word, it undoubtedly is.  Like Boccaccio, Rabelais, the Queen of Navarre, Ariosto, and Verville, the great author of The Human Comedy has painted an epoch.  In the fresh and wonderful language of the Merry Vicar Of Meudon, he has given us a marvellous picture of French life and manners in the sixteenth century.  The gallant knights and merry dames of that eventful period of French history stand out in bold relief upon his canvas.  The background in these life-like figures is, as it were, “sketched upon the spot.”  After reading the Contes Drolatiques, one could almost find one’s way about the towns and villages of Touraine, unassisted by map or guide.  Not only is this book a work of art from its historical information and topographical accuracy; its claims to that distinction rest upon a broader foundation.  Written in the nineteenth century in imitation of the style of the sixteenth, it is a triumph of literary archaeology.  It is a model of that which it professes to imitate; the production of a writer who, to accomplish it, must have been at once historian, linguist, philosopher, archaeologist, and anatomist, and each in no ordinary degree.  In France, his work has long been regarded as a classic—­as a faithful picture of the last days of the moyen age, when kings and princesses,