e my lady, who found her both pretty
and to her taste.

When the people of Valennes, Sache, Villaines, and other places,
learned the high price given for the maid of Thilouse, the good
housewives recognising the fact that nothing is more profitable than
virtue, endeavoured to nourish and bring up their daughters virtuous,
but the business was as risky as that of rearing silkworms, which are
liable to perish, since innocence is like a medlar, and ripens quickly
on the straw. There were, however, some girls noted for it in
Touraine, who passed for virgins in the convents of the religious, but
I cannot vouch for these, not having proceeded to verify them in the
manner laid down by Verville, in order to make sure of the perfect
virtue of women. However, Marie Fiquet followed the wise counsel of
her mother, and would take no notice of the soft requests, honied
words, or apish tricks of her master, unless they were flavoured with
a promise of marriage.

When the old lord tried to kiss her, she would put her back up like a
cat at the approach of a dog, crying out "I will tell Madame!" In
short at the end of six months he had not even recovered the price of
a single fagot. From her labour Marie Fiquet became harder and firmer.
Sometimes she would reply to the gentle request of her master, "When
you have taken it from me will you give it me back again?"

Another time she would say, "If I were as full of holes as a sieve not
one should be for you, so ugly do I think you."

The good old man took these village sayings for flowers of innocence,
and ceased not make little signs to her, long harangues and a hundred
vows and sermons, for by reason of seeing the fine breasts of the
maid, her plump hips, which at certain movements came into prominent
relief, and by reason of admiring other things capable of inflaming
the mind of a saint, this dear men became enamoured of her with an old
man's passion, which augments in geometrical proportions as opposed to
the passions of young men, because the old men love with their
weakness which grows greater, and the young with their strength which
grows less. In order to leave this headstrong girl no loophole for
refusal, the old lord took into his confidence the steward, whose age
was seventy odd years, and made him understand that he ought to marry
in order to keep his body warm, and that Marie Fiquet was the very
girl to suit him. The old steward, who had gained three hundred pounds
by diff