“Sir,” said John, “trust to me, if you please, I will tell you what we will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sell our two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker you ever knew, I will make French bread, and I’ve no doubt I shall pay my expenses well and make money”

“John,” said Sir Robert, “I agree wholly to do whatever you like”

And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, and bought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began to make French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of it than the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within two years that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to his lord “I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wine and will keep lodgings for good society

“John,” said Sir Robert, “do what you please, for I grant it, and am greatly pleased with you.”

John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people and gained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink with the best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and food that all his companions marvelled at it.  He made so much that within four years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besides clothes, etc, well worth fifty.

The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable to the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, not because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but because he was her man, and she owned him as though he were child.  The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense.  When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Marseilles, brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowing her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs.  Then after seven years’ patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed her place.

If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the part of Lady Macbeth.  Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare.  The author of “La Comtesse de Ponthieu” made no bad sketch of the character.  These are fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores who were the originals of the sketch.  The society which Orderic described in Normandy—­the generation of the first crusade—­produced a great variety of Lady Macbeths.  In the country of Evreux, about 1100, Orderic says that “a worse than civil war was waged between two powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful jealousy of their haughty wives.  The Countess Havise of Evreux took offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches,—­wife of Ralph, the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux,—­and