Giletta de Narbonne’s cure of the King of France transforms a skill inherited from her father into a means of reshaping her own future. The king’s painful fistula has resisted the efforts of physicians, and he has abandoned the prospect of further treatment. Giletta promises to heal him within eight days; when she succeeds, she invokes the reward he pledged and asks for Bertrand de Roussillon, the man she has loved since childhood. The episode makes healing both a medical achievement and the condition of a contested marriage, exposing the distance between the king’s gratitude, Bertrand’s regard for rank, and Giletta’s determination.

Background and Opportunity

Giletta’s purpose is bound to an attachment formed early in life. As a child she was brought up alongside Bertrand, the only son of the Count of Roussillon. When the count died, Bertrand was taken into the King of France’s care and went to Paris, leaving Giletta behind. Her own father, Master Gerard de Narbonne, died soon afterward. Though she was wealthy and of marriageable age, she could not forget Bertrand and refused the husbands her relatives proposed for her.

The king’s illness gives Giletta a legitimate reason to go to Paris and a possible route toward the marriage she desires. She hears that an improperly treated imposthume in the king’s breast has become a fistula, causing him great pain. Many physicians have attempted a cure, but their efforts have only aggravated the condition. The king, despairing of recovery, will accept no further counsel or assistance. Giletta sees the crisis as an opening: if the reported illness is as she believes, she may be able to heal him and ask for Bertrand in return.

The Cure and Its Terms

Giletta prepares a powder from simple ingredients that she believes useful for the king’s complaint, then rides to Paris. Before presenting herself to the king, she seeks out Bertrand. Her visit thus serves two connected purposes: she comes to attempt a cure, but she first makes contact with the man whose presence has shaped her hopes for years.

When Giletta asks to examine the king’s ailment, he allows her to see it. She immediately becomes confident that she can cure him, and promises recovery within eight days, without pain or fatigue for him. The king doubts that a young woman can accomplish what the best physicians have failed to do. Giletta answers that her medicine rests not on knowledge of her own invention, but on God’s aid and the medical learning of her father, who had been a celebrated physician during his lifetime. Her claim connects her treatment to an established inheritance of expertise rather than presenting it as an unexplained marvel.

The king agrees to let her try, but asks what should happen if she fails after persuading him to break his resolution against further treatment. Giletta accepts a severe condition: he may have her burned alive if she does not cure him within the stated eight days. In return, she asks that, if she succeeds, he marry her to a husband of her own choosing, excluding the king’s sons and other members of the royal house. He promises to do so, and she begins the treatment. She restores him to health before the deadline, fulfilling the condition on which their agreement depends.

The Reward and Bertrand’s Resistance

Once he has recovered, the king acknowledges that Giletta has earned a husband. She names Bertrand, explaining that she began to love him in childhood and has continued to love him above all others. Her request reveals the personal end toward which the cure has been directed: she has not merely sought the king’s favor, but has made the healing a way to claim a choice that her circumstances had otherwise kept out of reach.

The king regards the requested match as a serious difficulty, but he has pledged himself and will not break his word. He summons Bertrand from Paris and tells him to return to govern his county with the woman the king has given him as a wife. When Bertrand asks who she is, the king identifies her as the woman whose medicines restored his health. Bertrand recognizes Giletta and, though he finds her beautiful, objects that her lineage does not match his own. He calls her a healer and refuses to consent to the marriage.

The king insists that the promise cannot simply be set aside. He argues that Giletta is fair and wise, loves Bertrand deeply, and may make him happier than a woman of higher lineage. At this point the cure has succeeded, but its social consequence remains unsettled: the king’s recovered health establishes Giletta’s claim under their agreement, while Bertrand’s refusal exposes the class prejudice that stands between that claim and willing acceptance.

Narrative Significance

The episode gives Giletta agency through demonstrated competence and a carefully negotiated bargain. Her medical knowledge, learned from her father, brings her into the king’s presence; her success gives force to a request that would otherwise have little authority. She does not ask the king to choose a husband for her in general, but secures the right to name one, while explicitly excluding the royal family from the choice.

The cure therefore produces more than a bodily recovery. It obliges a ruler to honor his word and places a young woman’s decision against a nobleman’s assumptions about lineage. Bertrand’s first response shows that achievement and beauty do not automatically erase rank in his eyes; the king’s reply, by contrast, measures the proposed marriage through Giletta’s qualities and affection. The scene ends with the cure accomplished and the marriage demanded, but with Bertrand’s resistance still active, leaving the distinction between a promise secured and a union willingly accepted sharply in view.