at she would
not let them stir further from her petticoats than a hen allows her
chickens. In fact, she had an answer for everything.

Madame caused a woman to be sent for who dealt in magic, and who was
supposed to be learned in these mysteries, who told her that she had
often seen women unable to conceive in spite of every effort, but yet
they had succeeded by studying the manners and customs of animals.
Madame took the beasts of the fields for her preceptors, but she did
not increase in size; her flesh still remained firm and white as
marble. She returned to the physical science of the master doctors of
Paris, and sent for a celebrated Arabian physician, who had just
arrived in France with a new science. Then this savant, brought up in
the school of one Sieur Averroes, entered into certain medical
details, and declared that the loose life she had formerly led had for
ever ruined her chance of obtaining offspring. The physical reasons
which he assigned were so contrary to the teaching of the holy books
which establish the majesty of man, made in the image of his creator,
and so contrary to the system upheld by sound sense and good doctrine,
that the doctors of Paris laughed them to scorn. The Arabian physician
left the school where his master, the Sieur Averroes, was unknown.

The doctors told Madame, who had come to Paris, that she was to keep
on as usual, since she had had during her gay life the lovely
Theodora, by the cardinal of Ragusa, and that the right of having
children remained with women as long as their blood circulated, and
all that she had to do was to multiply the chances of conception. This
advice appeared to her so good that she multiplied her victories, but
it was only multiplying her defeats, since she obtained the flowers of
love without its fruits.

The poor afflicted woman wrote then to the pope, who loved her much,
and told him of her sorrows. The good pope replied to her with a
gracious homily, written with his own hand, in which he told her that
when human science and things terrestrial had failed, we should turn
to Heaven and implore the grace of God. Then she determined to go with
naked feet, accompanied by her husband, to Notre Dame de Liesse,
celebrated for her intervention in similar cases, and made a vow to
build a magnificent cathedral in gratitude for the child. But she
bruised and injured her pretty feet, and conceived nothing but a
violent grief, which was so great that some of he