DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0051
WOMEN OF THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE 25
Fool, or their Folle, (there was a Folle who was as famous
as Triboulet,1) and laughed at the crudest of sallies. They
believed all that was told them with an undiscriminating
curiosity and everything seemed equally true—the account
of a wizard who could recreate Venice Beauties, or facts
about the fauna of the Indies. Any man who chose to spin
yarns was an authority, and even a grave historian accepted
a traveller’s tale of magic on the rather vague word of a
gentleman who (he heard) had been appointed “Captain of
a place called Peru.”
We should not probably have understood their speech.
If you did not wish to be vulgar, you must use “ s ” for
“r,” aad “e” for “a”—saying “Basis” for Paris, “meri”
for marl and the like. And they had euphuisms of deport-
ment as well as of tongue. In the lame Anne de Bretagne’s
day every self-respecting woman had a limp; in that of her
successor, Mary Tudor, all the ladies of rank were cold in
manner, a 1’Anglaise. Strangest of all was their religion :
a curious medley of orthodox piety and of Paganism, which
made them careful in observance and very careless in appli-
cation. Conviction of sin goes counter to the French tradi-
tion of common-sense and of gaiety. These ladies held many
weapons ready against it: Penance and Absolution, or the
new-fangled doctrine of Predestination and Grace. Many of
them leaned towards the Reformation, when Reformation
still meant nothing more schismatic than the reform of the
Roman Church. They read the Bible for the first time and
found it a surprising new literature. They drew from it
Jeanne Sevin.
Fool, or their Folle, (there was a Folle who was as famous
as Triboulet,1) and laughed at the crudest of sallies. They
believed all that was told them with an undiscriminating
curiosity and everything seemed equally true—the account
of a wizard who could recreate Venice Beauties, or facts
about the fauna of the Indies. Any man who chose to spin
yarns was an authority, and even a grave historian accepted
a traveller’s tale of magic on the rather vague word of a
gentleman who (he heard) had been appointed “Captain of
a place called Peru.”
We should not probably have understood their speech.
If you did not wish to be vulgar, you must use “ s ” for
“r,” aad “e” for “a”—saying “Basis” for Paris, “meri”
for marl and the like. And they had euphuisms of deport-
ment as well as of tongue. In the lame Anne de Bretagne’s
day every self-respecting woman had a limp; in that of her
successor, Mary Tudor, all the ladies of rank were cold in
manner, a 1’Anglaise. Strangest of all was their religion :
a curious medley of orthodox piety and of Paganism, which
made them careful in observance and very careless in appli-
cation. Conviction of sin goes counter to the French tradi-
tion of common-sense and of gaiety. These ladies held many
weapons ready against it: Penance and Absolution, or the
new-fangled doctrine of Predestination and Grace. Many of
them leaned towards the Reformation, when Reformation
still meant nothing more schismatic than the reform of the
Roman Church. They read the Bible for the first time and
found it a surprising new literature. They drew from it
Jeanne Sevin.