With anger flashing in her eyes
 Answers the Queen of Paradise: 
 “Tell me, tell me! you of old
 Loved me once with love untold;
 Why now throw me aside? 
 Tell me, tell me! where a bride
 Kinder or fairer have you won?... 
 Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one,
 Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone,
 Leave me for a creature mean,
 Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? 
 Can you make a worse exchange,
 You that for a woman strange,
 Leave me who, with perfect love,
 Waiting you in heaven above,
 Had in my chamber richly dressed
 A bed of bliss your soul to rest? 
 Terrible is your mistake! 
 Unless you better council take,
 In heaven your bed shall be unmade,
 And in the flames of hell be spread.”

A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid.  No earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair combination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any other great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save her souls.  Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what they thought a serious object.  The more tyrannical Mary was, the more her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and in law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance without permission, did so at his own peril.  His life and property were forfeit.  Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option.

Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinary relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers were not overwrought.  The very brutality of the brutal compelled the courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were as coarse as the king was delicate in manners.  In heaven the manners were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver.  On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair which the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any means puritanic, thought more objectionable—­in fact, more frankly discreditable—­than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his influence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it through the law-court.  The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, was this:  A very worthless creature of Saint Peter’s—­a monk of Cologne—­who had led a scandalous life, and “ne cremoit dieu, ordre ne roule,” died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and dragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment.  Saint Peter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and accordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon.  The Trinity, somewhat severely, refused.  Finding his own interest insufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking the archangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, and they declined.  The brother apostles were appealed to, with the same result; and finally even