that man and woman
can have together in marriage, and as one of the handsomest and most
loving couples in Christendom, Fate, vexed to find two persons so
much at their ease, would no longer suffer them to continue in it, but
stirred up against them an enemy, who, keeping watch upon the lady, came
to a knowledge of her great happiness, and, ignorant the while of her
marriage, went and told the Lord of Jossebelin that the gentleman in
whom he had so much trust, went too often to his sister's room, and that
moreover at hours when no man should enter it. This the Count would
not at first believe for the trust that he had in his sister and in the
gentleman.

But the other, like one careful for the honour of the house, repeated
the charge so often that a strict watch was set, and the poor folk,
who suspected nothing, were surprised. For one evening the Lord of
Jossebelin was advised that the gentleman was with his sister, and,
hastening thither, found the poor love-blinded pair lying in bed
together. His anger at the sight robbed him of speech, and, drawing
his sword, he ran after the gentleman to kill him. But the other, being
nimble of body, fled in nothing but his shirt, and, being unable to
escape by the door, leaped through a window into the garden.

Then the poor lady, clad only in her chemise, threw herself upon her
knees before her brother and said to him--

"Sir, spare the life of my husband, for I have indeed married him;
and if you are offended punish only me, for what he did was done at my
request."

Her brother, beside himself with wrath, could only reply--

"Even if he be your husband one hundred thousand times over, yet will I
punish him as a rascally servant who has deceived me."

So saying, he went to the window and called out loudly to kill him,
which was speedily done before the eyes of himself and his sister. The
latter, on beholding the pitiful sight which no prayers on her part
had been able to prevent, spoke to her brother like a woman bereft of
reason.

"Brother," she said, "I have neither father nor mother, and I am old
enough to marry according to my own pleasure. I chose one whom many a
time you said you would gladly have me marry, and for doing by your own
counsels that which the law permits me to do without them, you have put
to death the man whom you loved best of all the world. Well, since my
prayers have been of no avail to preserve his life, I implore you, by
all the love you have ev