I. Now when Winter goes and leaves appear on the wild vine and the birdlets sing without one of them ever stopping, I compose a sirventes without twistings or turnings, since a wretch afflicts me, fellow who does not like the girls! May God give him unease! He thinks more of a gray old hag without flesh or fat. May disease smite his bones and may his jaw hang down! The gentle, graceful girl, to whom good report clings, fine, open-hearted, fresh, and white, from whom joy never turns away, she is the one whom I desire, if she but welcome me gently and press me to her, far more than the broken-down old hag, even if she gave all of Limoges and Aissa.
II. By Christ! The lover who ties himself up with an old woman is ill advised. He is worse off than the man who never wakes up. He exchanges his new clothes for rags, his horse for a sheep, and instead of wine he drinks water out of a pail. I make my moan of them [the old women], and I think that that color of theirs is wonderful which they make white and red with the stickiness of a beaten egg put round their ears, and the white paint they put on afterward and which they dry in the sun, and the rouge and the cosmetics —even in their armpit. And afterward, when they make water, it is very evident that it all comes out of an old woman [?].
III. Alack! The lover who gets entangled with an old woman does deceive himself about her so badly! But I don’t pity him, for he brings it all on himself [lit.: for he kills and slays himself]. Any old woman is of an ill race, and the lover who lies with her plucks for himself the rod with which he is scourged; for, even if she dresses well and prinks herself out and her clothesare made of new scarlet cloth, underneath them she has naught but a wrinkled skin. I would rather give away and spend all I have, even my shoes, for the sake of my fair girl who does not sell herself cheaply, than have all the riches of the king of Damietta and give up, on account of the silken cloth which covers it, a plump knee for a flat thigh.
IV. The lover who gets tied up with an old woman has a great lack of sense. They are really very ugly when you scan them well. I would bet a thousand sous that a well-shaped young damsel, even a misshapen one, is as good as five hundred old women. Sir Bertran lies like a painted face [?] . . . . . . I wish that he might get a broken head for it! When I hear him talk about eating and what he gets out of his good hostess, I’ll say that when he has to lie with her, he’ll pay dearly for the fine evening and all the pork and beef, for he’ll get “fussed” with her thick skin, so soft and wrinkled. It seems really, when a man touches her, as if she had never taken off her outer garment.
V. I am of the opinion that the lover who dotes on such a painted hag is bewitched. There is nothing to her but her clothes. And I think that it is a great abuse for a lady, after she loses her beauty, to make for herself a veil or other armor [?]. I would rather that she care for herself spiritually, so that her soul may be saved, for her body degenerates and grows worse all the time. So I preach to them [the old women] this sermon, for their great good luck. But I see that Sir Bertran is inclined to do them harm. It seems that, for his sins, he hopes to find in them every kind of gain, and so he keeps on suffering and enduring them. What matters that to me, when I am beside my hardhearted lady, even if it does go badly for her?
