de Serres with Gabrielle du Bourg, née Launay, was established and acknowledged. In vain did her advocate plead that her marriage to M. du Bourg had been dissolved by death, although this fact most certainly ought to have been accepted as consonant with sound theology.[73] None the less the result was that, in spite of her prayer to be allowed to enter a cloister, she was ordered to return to her first husband. Two days after, the President du Bourg awaited her arrival in the great hall of his mansion. She appeared, but could scarcely totter through the gates, for she had but a few moments previously drained a swift poison. Crying “I restore to you what you have lost,” she fell a corpse at his feet. At the same moment Captain de Serres died by his own hands.
It cannot escape notice that these events very closely resemble that novella of Bandello (II, 9), which relates the true history of Elena and Gerardo, adventures nearly resembling the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet. Elena and Gerardo are the children of two nobles of Venice, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Gerardo chances to see Elena at her window, and from that hour he knows neither happiness nor sleep until he has declared his consuming passion. A kindly nurse brings them together, and in her presence they exchange rings and vows of tenderest love before the statue of Madonna the Virgin, spending long nights in amorous ecstasy and bliss. For these unions were fast binding, although not a sacrament, indeed, until then had received the benison of Holy Church. It is a common saying to apply to any man: “Si, è ammogliato; ma il matrimonio non è stato benedetto.” Wherefore the spousals of the lovers remained a secret.
In a little while Messer Paolo, thinking great things of his son’s career in the world, dispatches the young man to Beirut, and Gerardo needs must go. But when he had been absent some six months Messer Pietro informs his daughter that he has appointed a day for her marriage with a young man of ancient house and fair estate, and not daring to tell her father what had passed, she sunk under her silent grief, and upon the evening before her new nuptials she fell into a swoon across her bed, so that in the morning she was found cold and stark as a stiffening corpse. The physicians assembled in numbers and talked learnedly; remedies of every sort were applied
