L'Avision Christine.

Christine de Pizan. Translation (c) Jeay and Garay. L'Avision-Christine. Ed. Sister Mary Louis Towner. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1932.

153.

[After my father's death] My husband was then the head of the household; he was a young, wise and sensible gentleman, well-liked by princes and all those who used to work with him in his profession, a profession which enabled him to sustain his family. But already Fortune had consigned me to its wheel, prepared to confront me with adversity and knock me down. It did not want me to enjoy the goodness of my husband and killed him in the prime of his life, when he was about to blossom in knowledge as well as in wisdom, cautious development and authority. It took him from me in his prime youth, when he was thirty-four, and I twenty-five. I was left in charge of three small children and a big household. Of course, I was full of bitterness, missing his sweet company and my past happiness which had not lasted more than ten years. Aware of the tribulations that would face me, and wanting to die rather than to live, remembering also that I had promised him my faith and love, I took the firm decision not to remarry.

I fell then in the valley of tribulation. [...] I could not be at my husband's bedside when he died because he was stricken by a sudden disease. He died, however, as a good Catholic in the city of Beauvais, where he was with the king. He was there with just his servants and other companions, and I could not exactly know the situation regarding his income. Indeed the usual conduct of husbands is not to communicate and explain their revenues to their wives, an attitude that often brings troubles, as my experience proves. Such behaviour does not make sense when the wives are not stupid but sensible and behaving wisely. I know very well that all he possessed was not disclosed to me.

Then I had to start dealing with the situation, which I had not learned to do, as someone accustomed to enjoy an easy life, and I had to drive the boat left in the storm without a captain.[...] Problems sprang at me from everywhere; lawsuits and trials surrounded me as if this were the natural fate of widows. Those who owed me money attacked me so that I would not dare ask anything about it. [...] Soon I was prevented from receiving my husband's inheritance, which was placed in the king's hands. I had to pay a fee for it even if I did not have any benefit from it.

[155: details of all the lawsuits she had to fight]

156.

The leech did not stop sucking my blood for fourteen years, so that if one misfortune ceased, another ordeal happened, in so many different ways that it would be too long and too tedious to tell even half of it. And so the leech of Fortune did not stop sucking my blood until I had nothing left. Then my trials stopped, but not my troubles. How many tears, sighs, lamentations, and pain did I let out when I was alone in my room, and when I contemplated my small children and my relatives. I considered the past time compared with our present misfortune, whose waves engulfed me without my being able to find a solution. I pitied my family more than myself because of these torments. Once somebody told me that I had no reason to complain because I was free, being alone and single. I replied that he had not looked at me carefully because I was three times doubled. And since he did not catch what I was saying, I explained that I was six times myself.

In addition to that, my heart was worried because of my fear that my situation might become known to my neighbours. I was determined not to let those around me and my neighbours see the decline of my situation; [...] I would have preferred death to demeaning myself.

[...]

The burden of my problems did not show in my attitude or my clothes. I shivered many times under my coat lined with fur and my old tunic. And in my beautifully-arranged bed, I spent many bad nights. The food was frugal, as is suitable for a widow. ... God knows how much I was tormented. When the sergeants came to carry out a confiscation, and my little things were taken, the shame I felt was worse than the harm. When I had to borrow money in order to avoid a greater setback, I asked for it, good Lord, with my face blushing, even if the person was a friend. Even now I am not cured of that attitude. It seems to me that I would not suffer more from a bout of fever. I remember how many times I spent the whole morning at the Law Court in winter, freezing and waiting for my counsel, in order to remind them of my case and consult them about it. I was even more disturbed by my attire than by their various conclusions and strange answers, which made my eyes water.