“She replies, ‘For what I have been I hold myself indebted to Providence and you. I consider it a favor lent me,’ and she acquiescingly returns to the house of her father, who has prudently saved her old garments, never supposing the marquis would ‘keep her long as wife.’ In good time the marquis summons her to prepare his home for a new wife. She affectionately complies. The new wife proves to be herself, the marquis being quite persuaded that her patience ‘proceeds from no want of understanding in her.’ Her children are restored. She weeps for joy, and they all live happily ever after.” Romance replies, “The chivalry in your instances is confined to the women, which is always pathetic. As to the actual Griselda of Aquitaine, whose name and story grew into the heart of an age, she lived just before the days of chivalry. Indeed, Shades of women like Griselda and Heloise may have inspired the chivalrous attitude toward women. “One should read Griselda’s story in Chaucer, not in shallow-hearted Boccaccio, even though it was the purest and most popular of his tales. Chaucer would make you feel her kinship with women now, who make sacrifices for love less open and rude but not so different from hers. “Listen, History,” continues Romance, “to Chaucer’s tale: You have commended bloodier deeds than Griselda’s. The marquis says to Griselda, when he demands the child, ‘In great lordship there is great servitude. I may not do as every ploughman may,’ and Griselda, like a mother, whose son is demanded as a sacrifice on the altar of her country, first consecrates him to God. She is as tender to her child as she is loyal to her husband, but I will say no more; no one but Chaucer should touch that scene. “I have always suspected that the real marquis in question intended to kill the child for exactly the reasons he stated, and the gentleness of the mother, who could not possibly protect the child, saved it. Life was held very loosely then. You see, History, I tell more truth than I am supposed to and you tell less, my idea being to appear fanciful, yours, to appear truthful. We are all poor sinners. However,” continues Romance, “a sweeter day was dawning. Out of the effort of the soldier to protect the pilgrim grew the Holy Wars, wherein the ideal that the strong should serve the weak was born, and I nursed it into chivalry.” “And a hideous and lawless state of things you brought forth,” remarked History; for Romance and History, like other old friends that have separated and come together again, cannot collate long in accord. “In some cases I taught men not to need the law’s control,” retorted Romance. “To make men gentle one must teach them gently, so I sent my troubadours through the land as trusty messengers of chivalry and bid them sing the new ideal into the very heart of the realm. And in song they contended as lustily for the point of honor as ever knight contended with his lance.