[Illustration: THE KNIGHT EURIALUS GETTING SECRETLY INTO HIS LADY-LOVE'S CHAMBER, 1477.] It is a tale of unlawful love, and tells how Lucrece a married lady of Sienna, fell in love with Eurialus, a knight of the court of the Emperor Sigismond. It is, we are told, a story of real life under fictitious names. The dialogue is easy, vigorous, and passionate, and the translator has well succeeded in transmuting these qualities into his yet unbroken mother tongue. Here, for instance, Lucrece is discussing with the faithful Zosias the subject of her love. "Houlde thy peace quod Lucrece, there is no feare at all. Nothynge he feareth that feareth not death ... "Oh! unhappie quod Zosias, thou shalt shame thy house, and onlye of all thy kynne thou shalte be adulteresse. Thinkest thou the deede can be secreate? A thousand eyne are about thee. Thy mother, if shee do accordinge, shall not suffer thy outrage to be prevye, not thy husbande, not thy cousyns, not thy maidens, ye, and thoughe thy servauntes woulde holde theyr peace, the bestes would speake it, y^e dogges, the poostes and the marble stones, and thoughe thou hyde all, thou canste not hyde it from God that seeth all ... "I knowe quod she it is accordinge as thou sayest, but the rage maketh me folow the worse. My mynde knoweth howe I fall hedling, but furour hath overcom and reygneth, and over all my thought ruleth love. I am determined to folow the commandement of love. Overmuche alas have I wrestled in vaine; if thou have pytie on me, carye my mesage."[46] If the German translation was adorned with woodcuts, the English text had an embellishment of a greater value; it consisted in the conclusion of the tale as altered by the English writer. In the Latin original of the future pope, Pius II., Lucrece dies, and Eurialus, having followed the Emperor back to Germany, mourns for her "till the time when Caesar married him to a virgin of a ducal house not less beautiful than chaste and wise," a very commonplace way of mourning for a dead mistress. This seemed insufferable to the English translator. Faithful as he is throughout, he would not take upon himself to alter actual facts, yet he thought right to give a different account of his hero's feelings: "But lyke as he folowed the Emperoure so dyd Lucres folow hym in hys sleep and suffred hym no nygtes rest, whom when he knew hys true lover to be deed, meaved by extreme dolour, clothed him in mournynge apparell, and utterly excluded all comforte, and yet though the Emperoure gave hym in mariage a ryghte noble and excellente Ladye, yet he never enjoyed after, but in conclusyon pitifully wasted his painful lyfe."[47]