In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday’s fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoined upon much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason, that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the practice thereof is placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope, but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning, gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of black dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative argument. A burgher’s wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist, which smashed her nose, and felled her to the ground. “It is reason and right,” says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, “that the husband should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her husband, _whether right or wrong_, and especially before other people.” Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. The knight places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined by the moralizing knight, namely, that “_L’obéissance aux volontés d’un chef absolu assimile l’homme à la brute_.” This, with a verbal alteration, may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight’s teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus agreed with a heathen poet--particularly as it was in Christian times