Hard beset and all alone!
By our Lady Mary's Son
Here no longer will I wonn,
If I may flee!

Then speak they, say they, tell they the Tale:

Nicolete was in prison, as ye have heard soothly, in the chamber. And
the noise and bruit of it went through all the country and all the land,
how that Nicolete was lost. Some said she had fled the country, and some
that the Count Garin de Biaucaire had let slay her. Whosoever had joy
thereof, Aucassin had none, so he went to the Captain of the town and
spoke to him, saying:

"Sir Captain, what hast thou made of Nicolete, my sweet lady and love,
the thing that best I love in all the world? Hast thou carried her off
or ravished her away from me? Know well that if I die of it, the price
shall be demanded of thee, and that will be well done, for it shall be
even as if thou hadst slain me with thy two hands, for thou hast taken
from me the thing that in this world I loved the best."

"Fair Sir," said the Captain, "let these things be. Nicolete is a
captive that I did bring from a strange country. Yea, I bought her at my
own charges of the Saracens, and I bred her up and baptized her, and made
her my daughter in God. And I have cherished her, and one of these days
I would have given her a young man, to win her bread honourably. With
this hast thou naught to make, but do thou take the daughter of a King or
a Count. Nay more, what wouldst thou deem thee to have gained, hadst
thou made her thy leman, and taken her to thy bed? Plentiful lack of
comfort hadst thou got thereby, for in Hell would thy soul have lain