“Defendant pleads ecstasy of love and anguish of mind. She said that because of Danger (Court term for husband) she could not always perform her contract, since she frequently had to profess that she was asleep, although she was awake; that it was highly ungallant in defendant to complain of snow and mire. Love should render him invulnerable. She also added that the man had the best of it, for he might repeat his hours and orisons while he was walking up and down before her door; also, he had the privilege of kissing her latch as he passed, whereas (feminine economy) she was obliged to purchase thread to tie up his violets. [Illustration: _Head of Justice, from Fiore’s Group. This Old Venetian Figure of Justice Still Presides Over the Gallery of Early Painters at Venice. Technically she is in advance of the Madonnas of Her Period._] “Judgment in favor of the lady. “Among the celebrated cases recorded in this court are two every-day disagreements between man and woman. A gentleman complains of the refusal of a lady to dance with him, which rendered him ridiculous. The court commanded the lady to dance with him. “Action was brought by a wife against her husband for restraining her from wearing a hat of the newest fashion. “Judgment for the lady. “I will close,” continues History, “by citing a few of the thirty-one rulings of this Court of Maria of Champagne: “1. Love and economy do not agree. “2. Without good reason no one can be forbidden to love. “3. Love is not stationary. If it does not diminish, it will increase. “4. It is not loving to kiss and tell. “5. No man can love two women at the same time. “6. A woman should persist in her choice till all hope be abandoned; like persistence cannot be demanded from man.” “Maria de Champagne was a profound jurist, but I doubt if she was a truly romantic woman,” replies Romance. “Were I not too chivalrous to expose to your commonplace laughter the gentlest yearning of a rude age, their uncertain groping for a vague ideal too noble for their actual conception, I could a sweeter tale unfold of Courts of Love of old. “But if you will laugh at ideals of romantic love, laugh kindly with me over its merriest comedy, written by the saddest and most chivalrous lover of them all. “Take down your files, Dame History, and find, if you can, another servitor of love as chivalrous to his lady as Molière was to his wife, a woman belonging to other men; Molière’s patience, like Griselda’s, ‘proceeded from no lack of understanding.’” “You have wandered far from the romance of the days of chivalry for your chivalrous instance,” sneers History.