December 24, 2020
Today, Saffredent tells us about a woman who shares a bedroom but not a bed with her husband—to avoid worsening the pain he feels “beneath the roots of his hairs”!—but who realizes he is kissing her chambermaid when she sees the shadows of their two faces meeting repeatedly as the chambermaid reads to her husband by candlelight. In order to interrupt their encounter, she laughs out loud, but when her husband asks why she is laughing, she says only, “I’m such a silly thing that I laugh at my own shadow!” Nonetheless, the kissing ends!
Our storytellers debate the woman’s reaction, whether it was too little or too much—Ennasuite says she “would have got up and put the candle out on [the chambermaid’s] nose,” whereas Hircan insists that “it’s not worth making a fuss about a kiss”—and then discuss marriage more generally, as comparable to the relationship between Christ and the Church and as either a harness or a comfort for men.
Freudenberger shows the shadow of the kissing figures quite clearly on the wall behind the bed!
