I played thee and my own folly in trusting thee, that I marvel that I
have still eyes in my head. Wherefore I implore thee, not for love of me,
whom thou hast no cause to love, but for the respect thou hast for
thyself as a gentleman, that thou let that which thou hast already done
suffice thee to avenge the wrong I did thee, and bring me my clothes,
that I may be able to get me down from here, and spare to take from me
that which, however thou mightst hereafter wish, thou couldst not restore
to me, to wit, my honour; whereas, if I deprived thee of that one night
with me, 'tis in my power to give thee many another night in recompense
thereof, and thou hast but to choose thine own times. Let this, then,
suffice, and like a worthy gentleman be satisfied to have taken thy
revenge, and to have let me know it: put not forth thy might against a
woman: 'tis no glory to the eagle to have vanquished a dove; wherefore
for God's and thine own honour's sake have mercy on me."

The scholar, albeit his haughty spirit still brooded on her evil
entreatment of him, yet saw her not weep and supplicate without a certain
compunction mingling with his exultation; but vengeance he had desired
above all things, to have wreaked it was indeed sweet, and albeit his
humanity prompted him to have compassion on the hapless woman, yet it
availed not to subdue the fierceness of his resentment; wherefore thus he
made answer:--"Madam Elena, had my prayers (albeit art I had none to
mingle with them tears and honeyed words as thou dost with thine)
inclined thee that night, when I stood perishing with cold amid the snow
that filled thy courtyard, to accord me the very least shelter, 'twere
but a light matter for me to hearken now to thine; but, if thou art now
so much more careful of thy honour than thou wast wont to be, and it irks
thee to tarry there naked, address thy prayers to him in whose arms it
irked thee not naked to pass that night thou mindest thee of, albeit thou
wist that I with hasty foot was beating time upon the snow in thy