giving on the part of Equitan. The King duly arrived at the
castle, and announced his intention to be bled, requesting that the
seneschal should undergo the same operation at the same time, and
occupy the same chamber by way of companionship. Then after the leech
had bled them the King asked that he might have a bath before leaving
his apartment, and the seneschal requested that his too should be made
ready. Accordingly on the third day the baths were brought to the
chamber, and the lady occupied herself with filling them. While she
was doing so her lord left the chamber for a space, and during his
absence the King and the lady were clasped in each other's arms. So
rapt were the pair in their amorous dalliance that they failed to
notice the return of the seneschal, who, when he saw them thus
engaged, uttered an exclamation of surprise and wrath. Equitan,
turning quickly, saw him, and with a cry of despair leapt into the
bath that the lady had prepared for the seneschal, and there perished
miserably, while the enraged husband, seizing his faithless wife,
thrust her headlong into the boiling water beside her lover, where she
too was scalded to death.

_The Lay of the Ash-Tree_

In olden times there dwelt in Brittany two knights who were neighbours
and close friends. Both were married, and one was the father of twin
sons, one of whom he christened by the name of his friend. Now this
friend had a wife who was envious of heart and rancorous of tongue,
and on hearing that two sons had been born to her neighbour she spoke
slightingly and cruelly about her, saying that to bear twins was ever
a disgrace. Her evil words were spread abroad, and at last as a result
of her malicious speech the good lady's husband himself began to doubt
and suspect the wife who had never for a moment given him the least
occasion to do so.

Strangely enough, within the year two daughters were born to the lady
of the slanderous tongue, who now deeply lamented the wrong she had
done, but all to no purpose. Fearful of the gossip which she thought
the event would occasion, she gave one of the children to a faithful
handmaiden, with directions that it should be laid on the steps of a
church, where it might be picked up as a foundling and nourished by
some stranger. The babe was wrapped in a linen cloth, which again was
covered with a beautiful piece of red silk that the lady's husband had
purchased in the East, and a handsome ring engraved with the fa