OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
to picture to itself anything but itself, or to reconstitute in any way, as we do to-day, times and scenes not its own. This was owing partly to its vitality and its youthfulness, which grasped at anything and everything without discernment, and partly to its lack of reliable material. The whole aspect of life, too, was changed and enlarged, and for the moment over-charged, for the flood-gates of the East, hitherto only partially opened, had been rent asunder by the traveller and the crusader.
Before we attempt to arrive at some idea of the manner of life of the women of the Middle Ages, it will be well, if possible, to modify what seems to be a general and perhaps a distorted impression of these women of bygone days, as regards their want of loyalty in their domestic relations, and all the deceit and cunning such a want led to. Without attempting to justify what is fundamentally wrong, let us go if we can into the region of fact, and in that region there is quite enough romance without introducing it from outside.
In the first place, so much more, as a rule, is heard of vice than of virtue. "La voix de la beauté parle bas: elle ne s'insinue que dans les âmes les plus éveillées." Then the standard of life in those days was very different from what it is to-day. Manners and customs which were
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