oot, Blanche, who was always
caught, said to him--

"Come here, Rene; do you know that while I have only committed venial
sins because I was asleep, you have committed mortal ones?"

"Ah, Madame!" said he, "where then will God stow away all the damned
if that is to sin!"

Blanche burst out laughing, and kissed his forehead.

"Be quiet, you naughty boy; it is a question of paradise, and we must
live there together if you wish always to be with me."

"Oh, my paradise is here."

"Leave off," said she. "You are a little wretch--a scapegrace who does
not think of that which I love--yourself! You do not know that I am
with child, and that in a little while I shall be no more able to
conceal it than my nose. Now, what will the abbot say? What will my
lord say? He will kill you if he puts himself in a passion. My advice
is little one, that you go to the abbot of Marmoustiers, confess your
sins to him, asking him to see what had better be done concerning my
seneschal.

"Alas," said the artful page, "if I tell the secret of our joys, he
will put his interdict upon our love."

"Very likely," said she; "but thy happiness in the other world is a
thing so precious to me."

"Do you wish it my darling?"

"Yes," replied she rather faintly.

"Well, I will go, but sleep again that I may bid you adieu."

And the couple recited the litany of Farewells as if they had both
foreseen that their love must finish in its April. And on the morrow,
more to save his dear lady than to save himself, and also to obey her,
Rene de Jallanges set out towards the great monastery.

HOW THE SAID LOVE-SIN WAS REPENTED OF AND LED TO GREAT MOURNING.

"Good God!" cried the abbot, when the page had chanted the Kyrie
eleison of his sweet sins, "thou art the accomplice of a great felony,
and thou has betrayed thy lord. Dost thou know page of darkness, that
for this thou wilt burn through all eternity? and dost thou know what
it is to lose forever the heaven above for a perishable and changeful
moment here below? Unhappy wretch! I see thee precipitated for ever in
the gulfs of hell unless thou payest to God in this world that which
thou owest him for such offence."

Thereupon the good old abbot, who was of that flesh of which saints
are made, and who had great authority in the country of Touraine,
terrified the young man by a heap of representations, Christian
discourses, remembrances of the commandments of the Church, and a
thousand eloquent th