o the ladies; and his abundance of love was, it is
said, the result of his studies among the sparrows. Thus it was that
he was always ready to give the ladies his assistance in counting the
joists, and this generosity finds its physical cause in the fact that,
having nothing to do, he was always ready to do something. His secret
virtues brought about, it is said, that popularity which he enjoyed in
the provinces. Certain people say that the lady of Chaumont had him in
her castle, to learn the truth about these qualities, and kept him
there for a week, to prevent him begging. But the good man jumped over
the hedges and fled in great terror of being rich. Advancing in age,
this great quintessencer found himself disdained, although his notable
faculties of loving were in no way impaired. This unjust turning away
on the part of the female tribe caused the first trouble of Vieux
par-Chemins, and the celebrated trial of Rouen, to which it is time I
came.

In this eighty-second year of his age he was compelled to remain
continent for about seven months, during which time he met no woman
kindly disposed towards him; and he declared before the judge that
that had caused the greatest astonishment of his long and honourable
life. In this most pitiable state he saw in the fields during the
merry month of May a girl, who by chance was a maiden, and minding
cows. The heat was so excessive that this cowherdess had stretched
herself beneath the shadow of a beech tree, her face to the ground,
after the custom of people who labour in the fields, in order to get a
little nap while her animals were grazing. She was awakened by the
deed of the old man, who had stolen from her that which a poor girl
could only lose once. Finding herself ruined without receiving from
the process either knowledge or pleasure, she cried out so loudly that
the people working in the fields ran to her, and were called upon by
her as witnesses, at the time when that destruction was visible in her
which is appropriate only to a bridal night. She cried and groaned,
saying that the old ape might just as well have played his tricks on
her mother, who would have said nothing.

He made answer to the peasants, who had already raised their hoes to
kill him, that he had been compelled to enjoy himself. These people
objected that a man can enjoy himself very well without enjoying a
maiden--a case for the provost, which would bring him straight to the
gallows; and he was ta