Giletta Cures the French King’s Fistula

Gillette de Narbonne’s cure of the King of France’s fistula is both a feat of practical healing and the decisive action that gives her a claim to the husband she has long desired. She arrives at court with a remedy prepared from medicinal simples, wins the king’s consent to test her skill, and restores his health within the promised period. The cure is not an end in itself: it establishes the grounds for her to ask the king to honor a specific marriage bargain.

Background and Motive

Gillette has loved Bertrand de Roussillon since they were children. She was the daughter of Master Gerard de Narbonne, the physician retained by Bertrand’s father, the Count of Roussillon. After the count died, Bertrand was taken to Paris and placed in the King of France’s care, separating the two young people. Gillette remained behind, and although she grew into a wealthy young woman, closely guarded after her father’s death, she could find no honorable opportunity to visit Bertrand. She also refused the husbands her relatives proposed, without explaining that she had never stopped loving him.

News of the king’s illness gives her the opening she needs. The king’s fistula had developed after an imposthume in his breast was badly treated. Many physicians had tried to help, but their efforts had made the condition worse; the king, despairing of a cure, would accept no further advice or assistance. Gillette hears of his suffering while her love for Bertrand is especially intense. She judges that, if the illness is as she understands it, she may be able to heal him—and that a successful cure could give her a legitimate reason to go to Paris and seek Bertrand as her husband.

The Cure at Court

Gillette has learned medicine from her father. Relying on that instruction, she prepares a powder from simples suited to the ailment she believes the king has. She travels to Paris and first makes a point of seeing Bertrand. She then presents herself to the king and asks permission to examine his condition. Once she has seen the fistula, she is certain she can cure it, and offers to make him well within eight days without causing him pain or fatigue.

The king is skeptical. The most accomplished physicians in the world have failed, and he doubts that a young woman can succeed where they could not. Gillette answers that her knowledge is not merely her own: she treats with God’s aid and with the medical learning of her father, whom she identifies as a famous physician in his lifetime. Her appeal combines confidence in the remedy with an account of where her expertise comes from. The king considers that she may have been sent to him by God and agrees to let her try, despite his resolution to refuse further treatment.

The trial is framed as a wager with severe stakes. The king asks what should happen if she fails after persuading him to break his resolve. Gillette accepts that he may have her burned alive if she does not cure him within eight days. In return, she asks that, if she succeeds, he arrange a good and honorable marriage for her. She reserves the choice of husband for herself, excluding only the king’s sons and members of the royal house. The king readily promises to meet those terms, and Gillette begins the treatment. Before the eight-day limit expires, she has restored him to health; the account names the prepared powder but gives no further details of its ingredients or administration.

The Promise and Its Consequences

Once he is well, the king acknowledges that Gillette has earned a husband. She names Bertrand de Roussillon, whom she says she began to love in childhood and has loved ever since. Her request brings the private motive behind the journey into the open: the cure has allowed her not only to reach Bertrand but also to make the king’s gratitude answer to her own choice.

The king sees the difficulty in giving Bertrand to her, but he has pledged his word and will not break it. He summons Bertrand, declares that the young man is old enough to govern his county, and says that he is to return there with the woman the king has given him as a wife. When Bertrand asks who she is, the king identifies her as the woman who restored his health. The cure thus changes Gillette’s standing at court from that of an unfamiliar petitioner to the king’s benefactor, whose reward he has publicly promised.

Bertrand recognizes Gillette and rejects the proposed marriage. Although he acknowledges her beauty, he objects that her birth does not match his rank and scornfully reduces her achievement to the work of a female healer. The king answers that he cannot withdraw a promise made in return for his recovery, and argues that Gillette is beautiful, wise, and deeply in love with Bertrand. The evidence here ends with Bertrand still resisting, so the cure secures the king’s intervention and the marriage demand, but does not itself settle Bertrand’s response.

Narrative Significance

The episode makes medical service the hinge between private desire and public obligation. Gillette’s knowledge has a concrete result: the king’s suffering ends within the period she sets. That result gives force to her request, while the king’s promise converts gratitude into an enforceable expectation. Bertrand’s resistance, by contrast, rests on social rank rather than on the success of the treatment; the cure exposes the gap between the worth the king recognizes in Gillette and the status Bertrand believes she lacks.

The tale also presents Gillette’s medical competence as something acquired through her father’s teaching and exercised by her own judgment. She identifies the illness, prepares a remedy, accepts the risk of failure, and negotiates the terms of her reward before she begins. Her action is therefore more than a miraculous favor granted to a king: it is the means by which she creates an opportunity unavailable to her through ordinary family arrangements. Yet the cure grants her leverage, not immediate control over its outcome; the king can promise Bertrand, but Bertrand’s refusal remains a further obstacle.