Taak fyr and ber it in the derkeste hous
Bitwix this and the mount of Kaukasous,
And lat men shette the dores and go thenne;
Yet wole the fyr as faire lye and brenne
As twenty thousand men myghte it biholde;
His office natureel ay wol it holde,
Up peril of my lyf, til that it dye.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The old hag contrasts the so-called noble men to fire as a metaphor to show how a true noble should act. If you light a fire in the darkest house between here and the Caucases Mountains and shut the doors, she says, it will burn as brightly as if 20,000 people were watching it. She is suggesting that some people only do noble deeds when they know others are watching, but were they truly noble they would do these deeds also in private.