_A towns-woman of Tours returned so much good for all the evil treatment she had received from her husband, that the latter forsook the mistress whom he was quietly maintaining, and returned to his wife_. (1) 1 It is probable that the incidents related in this tale occurred between 1460 and 1470. They will be found recorded in the _Ménagier de Paris_. (See Baron Pichon’s edition, 1847, vol. i. p. 237). A similar narrative figures in some editions of Morlini’s tales, notably the _Novello, Fabello, et Comedies, Neapoli_, 1520. We further find it in Gueudeville’s translation of Erasmus’s Colloquies (_Dialogue sur le mariage, collogues, &c., Leyden_, 1720, vol. i. p. 87), and Mr. Walter Keily has pointed out (the _Heptameron_, Bohn, 1864) that William Warner worked the same incidents into his poem _Albion’s England_, his stanzas being reproduced in Percy’s _Reliques_ under the title of _The Patient Countess_.--L. and Ed. In the city of Tours there dwelt a chaste and comely townswoman, who, by reason of her virtues, was not only loved but feared also and respected by her husband. Nevertheless, with all the fickleness of men who grow weary of ever eating good bread, he fell in love with a farm tenant (2) of his own, and would oft-time leave Tours to visit the farm, where he always remained two or three days; and when he came back to Tours he was always in so sorry a plight that his wife had much ado to cure him, yet, as soon as he was whole again, he never failed to return to the place where pleasure caused him to forget all his ills. 2 The French word here is _métayère_. The _métayer_ (fem. métayère) was a farm tenant under the general control of his landlord, who supplied him with seed and took to himself a considerable portion of the produce. The system was done away with at the Revolution, but was revived here and there under the Restoration, when some of the nobles came to “their own” again, and there may even nowadays be a few instances of the kind.--Ed. When his wife, who was anxious above all things for his life and health, found him constantly return home in so evil a plight, she went to the farm and found there the young woman whom her husband loved. Then, without anger but with graceful courage, she told her that she knew her husband often went to see her, but that she was ill-pleased to find him always return home exhausted in consequence of her sorry treatment of him. The poor woman, influenced as much by respect for her mistress as by regard for the truth, was not able to deny the fact, and craved forgiveness.