nce been held in great honour in fair Touraine.

This teaches us to have always recourse to God and the saints in all
the undertakings of life, to be steadfast in all things, and, above
all, that a great love triumphs over everything, which is an old
sentence; but the author has rewritten it because it is a most
pleasant one.

CONCERNING A PROVOST WHO DID NOT RECOGNISE THINGS

In the good town of Bourges, at the time when that lord the king
disported himself there, who afterwards abandoned his search after
pleasure to conquer the kingdom, and did indeed conquer it, lived
there a provost, entrusted by him with the maintenance of order, and
called the provost-royal. From which came, under the glorious son of
the said king, the office of provost of the hotel, in which behaved
rather harshly my lord Tristan of Mere, of whom these tales oft make
mention, although he was by no means a merry fellow. I give this
information to the friends who pilfer from old manuscripts to
manufacture new ones, and I show thereby how learned these Tales
really are, without appearing to be so. Very well, then, this provost
was named Picot or Picault, of which some made picotin, picoter, and
picoree; by some Pitot or Pitaut, from which comes _pitance_; by
others in Languedoc, Pichot from which comes nothing comes worth
knowing; by these Petiot or Petiet; by those Petitot and Petinault, or
Petiniaud, which was the masonic appellation; but at Bourges he was
called Petit, a name which was eventually adopted by the family, which
has multiplied exceedingly, for everywhere you find "_des Petits_,"
and so he will be called Petit in this narrative. I have given this
etymology in order to throw a light on our language, and show how our
citizens have finished by acquiring names. But enough of science.

This said provost, who had as many names as there were provinces into
which the court went, was in reality a little bit of a man, whose
mother had given him so strange a hide, that when he wanted to laugh
he used to stretch his cheeks like a cow making water, and this smile
at court was called the provost's smile. One day the king, hearing
this proverbial expression used by certain lords, said jokingly--

"You are in error, gentlemen, Petit does not laugh, he's short of skin
below the mouth."

But with his forced laugh Petit was all the more suited to his
occupation of watching and catching evil-doers. In fact, he was worth
what he cost.