from Paradise, Eve still carried in her hand, unconsciously, the fatal branch which she had plucked from the forbidden tree; and casting her eye upon it, and calling to mind all the evil of which it had been the occasion, she resolved that she would keep it for ever, as a memorial of her great misadventure. But then she recollected that she had neither coffer nor hutch to keep it in, for in those times it was not yet the custom to have such things, so she planted it upright in the earth, and by the will of the Lord it struck root, and became a great tree. Now the trunk and the branches and the leaves of this tree, were all as white as a peeled nut, that it might be a type of virginity[1], and by reason that she who planted it was yet a virgin. One day while they were lamenting their fall under
- ↑ Si sachez que virginite et pucellage ne sont pas une mesme chose, ne une mesme vertu, mais y a grant difference entre lung et lautre, car pucellage ne se peut de trop comparer a virginite, et si vous diray pour quoy. Pucellage est une vertu que tous ceulx et toutes celles lont qui nont at-
