2 We had thought that Friar Vallès might possibly be Robert de Valle, who at the close of the fifteenth century wrote a work entitled _Explanatio in Plinium_, but find that this divine was a Bishop of Rouen, and never belonged to the Grey Friars. In Gessner’s _Biographia Universalis_, continued by Frisius, mention is made of three learned ecclesiastics of the name of Valle living in or about Queen Margaret’s time: Baptiste de Valle, who wrote on war and duelling; William de Valle, who penned a volume entitled _De Anima Sorbono_; and Amant de Valle, a Franciscan minorité born at Toulouse, who was the author of numerous philosophical works, the most important being _Elucidationes Scoti_.--B. J. It happened also that during Advent a hare-brained young fellow, who had married a passably handsome young woman, continued none the less to run at the least as dissolute a course as did those that were still bachelors. The young wife, being advised of this, could not keep silence upon it, so that she very often received payment after a different and a prompter fashion than she could have wished. For all that, she ceased not to persist in lamentation, and sometimes in railing as well; which so provoked the young man that he beat her even to bruises and blood. Thereupon she cried out yet more loudly than before; and in a like fashion all the women of the neighbourhood, knowing the reason of this, could not keep silence, but cried out publicly in the streets, saying-- “Shame, shame on such husbands! To the devil with them!” By good fortune the Grey Friar De Vallès was passing that way and heard the noise and the reason of it. He resolved to touch upon it the following day in his sermon, and did so. Turning his discourse to the subject of marriage and the affection which ought to subsist in it, he greatly extolled that condition, at the same time censuring those that offended against it, and comparing wedded to parental love. Among other things, he said that a husband who beat his wife was in more danger, and would have a heavier punishment, than if he had beaten his father or his mother. “For,” said he, “if you beat your father or your mother you will be sent for penance to Rome; but if you beat your wife, she and all the women of the neighbourhood will send you to the devil, that is, to hell. Now look you what a difference there is between these two penances. From Rome a man commonly returns again, but from hell, oh! from that place, there is no return: _nulla est redemptio_” (3) After preaching this sermon, he was informed that the women were making a triumph of it, (4) and that their husbands could no longer control them. He therefore resolved to set the husbands right just as he had previously assisted their wives. 3 This was the Pope’s expression apropos of Messer Biagio, whom Michael Angelo had introduced into his “Last Judgment.”--M.