One Hundred Merrie and Delightsome Stories | Page 8

the Bishop, and what the Bishop said to
him--which you will find related here.
STORY THE NINETY-SEVENTH -- BIDS AND BIDDINGS.
Of a number of boon companions making good cheer and drinking at a
tavern, and how one of them had a quarrel with his wife when he
returned home, as you will hear.
STORY THE NINETY-EIGHTH -- THE UNFORTUNATE LOVERS.
Of a knight of this kingdom and his wife, who had a fair daughter aged
fifteen or sixteen. Her father would have married her to a rich old
knight, his neighbour, but she ran away with another knight, a young
man who loved her honourably; and, by strange mishap, they both died
sad deaths without having ever co-habited,--as you will hear shortly.
STORY THE NINETY-NINTH -- THE METAMORPHOSIS.
Relates how a Spanish Bishop, not being able to procure fish, ate two
partridges on a Friday, and how he told his servants that he had
converted them by his prayers into fish--as will more plainly be related
below.

STORY THE HUNDREDTH AND LAST -- THE CHASTE LOVER.
Of a rich merchant of the city of Genoa, who married a fair damsel,
who owing to the absence of her husband, sent for a wise clerk--a
young, fit, and proper man--to help her to that of which she had need;
and of the fast that he caused her to make--as you will find more
plainly below.

[Illustration: contents.jpg Contents]
[Illustration: intro.jpg Introduction]
*****

INTRODUCTION
The highest living authority on French Literature--Professor George
Saintsbury--has said:
"The Cent Nouvelles is undoubtedly the first work of literary prose in
French, and the first, moreover, of a long and most remarkable series of
literary works in which French writers may challenge all comers with
the certainty of victory. The short prose tale of a comic character is the
one French literary product the pre-eminence and perfection of which it
is impossible to dispute, and the prose tale first appears to advantage in
the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The subjects are by no means new. They
are simply the old themes of the fabliaux treated in the old way. The
novelty is in the application of prose to such a purpose, and in the
crispness, the fluency, and the elegance, of the prose used."
Besides the literary merits which the eminent critic has pointed out, the
stories give us curious glimpses of life in the 15th Century. We get a
genuine view of the social condition of the nobility and the middle
classes, and are pleasantly surprised to learn from the mouths of the
nobles themselves that the peasant was not the down-trodden serf that

we should have expected to find him a century after the Jacquerie, and
350 years before the Revolution.
In fact there is an atmosphere of tolerance, not to say bonhommie about
these stories which is very remarkable when we consider under what
circumstances they were told, and by whom, and to whom.
This seems to have struck M. Lenient, a French critic, who says:
"Generally the incidents and personages belong to the bourgeoisée;
there is nothing chivalric, nothing wonderful; no dreamy lovers,
romantic dames, fairies, or enchanters. Noble dames, bourgeois, nuns,
knights, merchants, monks, and peasants mutually dupe each other. The
lord deceives the miller's wife by imposing on her simplicity, and the
miller retaliates in much the same manner. The shepherd marries the
knight's sister, and the nobleman is not over scandalized.
"The vices of the monks are depicted in half a score tales, and the
seducers are punished with a severity not always in proportion to the
offence."
It seems curious that this valuable and interesting work has never
before been translated into English during the four and a half centuries
the book has been in existence. This is the more remarkable as the work
was edited in French by an English scholar--the late Thomas Wright. It
can hardly be the coarseness of some of the stories which has prevented
the Nouvelles from being presented to English readers when there are
half a dozen versions of the Heptameron, which is quite as coarse as
the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, does not possess the same historical
interest, and is not to be compared to the present work as regards either
the stories or the style.
In addition to this, there is the history of the book itself, and its
connection with one of the most important personages in French
history--Louis XI. Indeed, in many French and English works of
reference, the authorship of the Nouvelles has been attributed to him,
and though in recent years, the writer is now believed--and no doubt
correctly--to have been Antoine de la Salle, it is tolerably certain that

Prince Louis heard all the stories related, and very possibly contributed
several of them. The circumstances under which these stories