ns always, and is always longing for male society. Our poor dead
friend, the young Sire de Giac, met his death through her; she drained
his marrow in one springtime. God's truth! to know such bliss as that
of which she rings the bells and lights the fires, what man would not
forfeit a third of his future happiness? and he who has known her once
would for a second night forfeit without regret eternity."

"But," said Raoul, "in things which should be so much alike, how is it
that there is so great a difference?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Thereupon the company burst out laughing, and animated by the wine and
a wink from their master, they all commenced relating droll and quaint
conceits, laughing, shouting, and making a great noise. Now, knowing
not that an innocent scholar was there, these jokers, who had drowned
their sense of shame in the wine-cups, said things to make the figures
on the mantel shake, the walls and the ceilings blush; and the duke
surpassed them all, saying, that the lady who was in bed in the next
room awaiting a gallant should be the empress of these warm
imaginations, because she practised them every night. Upon this the
flagons being empty, the duke pushed Raoul, who let himself be pushed
willingly, into the room, and by this means the prince compelled the
lady to deliberate by which dagger she would live or die. At midnight
the Sire d'Hocquetonville came out gleefully, not without remorse at
having been false to his good wife. Then the Duc d'Orleans led Madame
d'Hocquetonville out by a garden door, so that she gained her
residence before her husband arrived here.

"This," said she, in the prince's ear, as she passed the postern,
"will cost us all dear."

One year afterwards, in the old Rue du Temple, Raoul d'Hocquetonville,
who had quitted the service of the Duke for that of Jehan of Burgundy,
gave the king's brother a blow on the head with a club, and killed
him, as everyone knows. In the same year died the Lady
d'Hocquetonville, having faded like a flower deprived of air and eaten
by a worm. Her good husband had engraved upon her marble tomb, which
is in one of the cloisters of Peronne, the following inscription--

HERE LIES
BERTHA DE BOURGONGE
THE NOBLE AND COMELY WIFE
OF
RAOUL, SIRE DE HOCQUETONVILLE.

ALAS! PRAY NOT FOR HER SOUL