On the eve of Shrove Tuesday I beheld a marvel, of which I will now tell you; for on that day was buried by Lord Hugh of Landricourt, who was with me, carrying a banner. There as he lay on a bier in my chapel, six of my knights were leaning on sacks full of barley; and because they were speaking loud in my chapel, and disturbing the priest, I went to them, and told them to hold their peace, and said it was a discourteous thing for knights and gentlemen to talk while mass was being sung. And they began to laugh and told me, laughing, that they were remarrying the dead man’s wife. And I spoke sharply to them, and told them that such words were neither good nor seemly, and that they had forgotten their companion over soon. And God took such vengeance upon them, that on the morrow was the great battle of Shrove Tuesday, in which they were all killed or mortally wounded, so that the wives of all six were in case to marry again.
Geoffroy de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville, Memoirs of the Crusades, trans. Sir Frank Marzials (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., n.d.), 209.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 375
