Heptameron

Story 21 tells of Rolandine, a relative of the queen who, at age 30, was still unmarried due to her father’s neglect and the queen’s dislike. A bastard of a good and noble family, “gallant and worthy” (236), forms a deep attachment to Rolandine, “[c]ompanions as they were in misfortune” (236). The queen forbids the couple from meeting as they are considered an unequal match, so they devise ways to meet privately. Declaring their love for one another, they decide to secretly marry but delay consummation until Rolandine’s father dies or she can obtain his approval. They continue meeting stealthily—speaking through facing windows in the palace, with letters passed by pages—until the queen discovers their affair and imprisons Rolandine, while her gentleman must flee or face death. Rolandine and the queen have a confrontation, and the former is eventually sent away to a remote castle to be isolated. Rolandine then discovers her husband’s love is not as true as hers, and he has been pursuing a rich German woman. Not long after, he dies, and she reconciles with her father. She marries a decent man, they have two sons, and, despite animosity from her brother, God provides, and they live a good life together.

The next story begins with a Benedictine Prior in Paris who had a saintly reputation until his 55th year, where he began to enjoy his comfortable celebrity—“to rather enjoy his treatment in spite of having originally scorned it” (255). He becomes self-indulgent and then infatuated with a nun named Marie Héroet. He thinks she is naïve and decides to frighten her into compliance with his passions, abusing and scolding her in front of others, then trying to touch her in private. She rebukes him, and he attacks her, but she screams, and the Abbess (who is her great-aunt) comes to her rescue. The Prior convinces the Abbess the girl simply fainted and then has the Abbess moved to a different convent. He continues to pursue her, and when she refuses him, he arranges two false accusers to say they witnessed her in lewd acts with the confessor. He then attempts to convince her to let him check her virginity, and he eventually leaves the convent in a rage, but not before ordering them to keep her essentially as a prisoner, with no contact with her family. Marie’s mother becomes concerned, and when her brother visits, Marie passes him a note detailing her entire ordeal with the Prior. The mother seeks help from the Queen of Navarre (Marguerite), who publicly shames the Prior and restores Marie’s reputation, appointing her Abbess of the Abbey of Gy.

A tragedy, Story 23 take place in Périgord, where a gentleman, who is devoted to the Franciscan order, regularly houses Franciscan friars in his home. His wife has just delivered a newborn boy, and she asks a visiting friar if it is a mortal sin for a man to sleep with his wife just after childbirth. The friar affirms this belief but relents later, saying if she has stopped bleeding, the husband can go to her after two o’clock in the morning. The friar sneaks into her room and sleeps with her (she believes he’s her husband), then flees into the night. When her husband comes to sleep with her, they both realize what happened, and she is devastated, having protected her honor until this point. The husband pursues the friar; the wife is so distraught that she hangs herself from the bed, and in doing so, her foot suffocates her son. Upon discovery of the bodies, her brother chases after the husband, thinking he was the cause of her suicide and mortally wounding him in a fight before hearing what really happened. Once all three are buried, the brother seeks and obtains forgiveness from King Francis I.

Story 24 takes place in the Castile region of Spain, where a fine gentleman named Elisor attracts the Queen’s attention, in part because he has no obvious love interest. She is relentless in questioning him, and he tells her the next time they go hunting, he will reveal his love to her. At the next hunt, Elisor attaches a mirror to his clothes, and while helping the Queen dismount, he opens his cloak so she can see herself in the mirror. When she comes to understand his meaning, he admits he has loved her for seven years, and she decides to test his love for another seven years, splitting a ring and sending him away with half. Seven years later, she is approached by a hermit who gives her a ring and a note and then disappears. From the poetry in the note, she is dismayed to learn that her rejection of Elisor drove him to become a hermit and that he eventually found a greater love in serving God. She searches for him everywhere, but he dies and goes to heaven before she finds him.

Story 25 is set in Paris, where the second wife of an older lawyer begins to get discouraged because he has not given her a child. One day at a wedding, she catches the eye of a Prince, and, given their mutual attraction, they make plans for him to visit her at night. The Prince goes to visit her one night and, creeping into the house, encounters the lawyer, who is as oblivious to the Prince’s purpose in the house as he is excited to host such an esteemed visitor. The Prince stays to chat for a bit, and on her advice, he goes to leave but instead hides in a dressing room to wait for her. She joins him after her husband falls asleep, and after this successful encounter they continue to meet regularly. The Prince begins to take a shortcut to her house through a monastery so regularly that the monks believe he is a man of great piety. When his sister hears of his new, pious reputation, she questions him, and they have a good laugh when she learns the truth.

Story 26 is set in the past during the time of Louis XII and tells of a 23-year-old lady who is married to an almost 50-year-old man. Although she makes an effort to live conservatively and conform to her husband, “she looked more like a widow than a married woman” (292), she eventually begins to fall in love with a 15-year-old named d’Avennes, whom her husband has taken under his wing as an adopted son. He feels the same, but to hide his affection he begins an affair with a woman in town, disguising himself as a Spanish stable boy so they can meet secretly while her husband is away. Though they are successful, the lack of sleep begins to take a toll on d’Avennes, who returns to his adoptive parents’ house in a state of illness. The lady notes his demeanor and helps him heal over the next two weeks, during which time their affection grows, and he begins to idealize her as “Virtue itself” (299). Eventually, he devises a trick to get her alone and attempts to enter her bed, but she refuses him, saying, “did you imagine that a chaste heart can be changed by opportunity?” (301). Despite her refusals, her passion for him grows, and the unrequited love makes her ill. D’Avennes comes to visit her on her deathbed, where she admits her love to him but dies a chaste woman. Both men mourn her, and while d’Avennes, now 18, goes to court, he mourns her for 10 years.

In Story 27, a chamberlain of the princess lives in Amboise with his wife, and one of his colleagues, the secretary, comes to stay with him for two weeks. The secretary decides to pursue the wife, who has the good sense to set a trap to expose him. She feigns interest in him and invites him to go to her room to wait for her, at which point she calls to him that she is going to ask her husband for permission, saying she’s sure “that you are too good a friend of his to want to say anything to me which you wouldn’t want repeated to him!” (308). The secretary is humiliated, and the husband pleased at his wife’s virtuous trick.

Story 28 is set in Paris, where a secretary to Marguerite de Navarre catches a merchant, Bernard de Ha, teaching the lieutenant’s maids a bawdy Gascon dance. The secretary blackmails the merchant into bringing him a Basque ham pie and uses the occasion to impress a love interest and some friends. However, the merchant is sly and tricks the secretary, giving him a “pie” that’s a baked wooden clog from Gascon. When the secretary goes to tell the lieutenant, Bernard de Ha has beaten him to it and only finds humiliation for trying to trick a Gascon.

In Story 29, a rich farmer marries a younger woman who takes multiple lovers since her husband cannot give her a child. Eventually she turns to the local parish priest, who is visiting her one day when the husband returns unexpectedly. The priest hides in a loft, and the wife proceeds to get her husband drunk at dinner so the priest can escape. When the husband falls asleep, the priest leans over to see if it is safe to make an escape but falls into the room along with a winnowing basket. Though the husband awakes, the quick-witted priest pretends he has come to return the basket and escapes scot-free.

Told by Hircan, Story 30 takes place in Languedoc, where a wealthy widow lives alone with her son. She vows never to remarry and becomes very religious, living strictly. Meanwhile, her teenaged son takes interest in a girl who sleeps in the mother’s room, making advances on her. When the girl complains to the mother, the latter does not believe her. However, she decides to find out for sure, taking the girl’s place at night to discover her son’s intentions. When her son comes to seduce the girl, she waits to see what he will do; unaware it’s his mother in bed, he joins her there, and the mother suddenly is swept away with passion, “so fragile was her nature, that her anger turned to pleasure, a pleasure so abominable, that she forgot she was a mother” (318). Giving in to this passion, she becomes pregnant by her son that night, and overcome with regret, she sends him away to live with relatives the next day.

She gives birth with the help of her half-brother, who takes the infant girl as his own. Eventually, her son asks permission to return home; she refuses him until he marries someone he loves, afraid of falling into the same sin again. By chance, he ends up falling in love with and marrying his own daughter, and when the lady hears of this, she goes to the Legate at Avignon for advice. They tell her to keep it a secret since they are innocent of the sin but that she must do lifelong penance. The couple lives happily ever after, “For she was his daughter, his sister, his wife. And he was her father, brother and husband” (320), while the mother can only weep at the sight of their happiness.