_Heptameron_. The story therefore may be worth telling again, though
it may be found in the "Cinquième Discours" of the _Vies des Dames
Galantes_.

Brantôme's brother, not yet a captain in the army, but a student
travelling in Italy, had in sojourning at Ferrara, when Renée of France
was Duchess, fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle de la Roche. For
love of him she had returned to France, and, visiting his own country
of Gascony, had attached herself to the Court of Margaret, where she
had died. And it happened that Bourdeilles, six months afterwards, and
having forgotten all about his dead love, came to Pau and went to pay
his respects to the Queen. He met her coming back from vespers, and she
greeted him graciously, and they talked of this matter and of that. But,
as they walked together hither and thither, the Queen drew him, without
cause shown, into the church she had just left, where Mademoiselle de
la Roche was buried. "Cousin," said she, "do you feel nothing stirring
beneath you and under your feet?" But he said, "Nothing, Madame."
"Think, cousin," then said she once again. But he said, "Madame, I have
thought well, but I feel nought; for under me there is but a stone, hard
and firmly set." "Now, do I tell you," said the Queen, leaving him
no longer at study, "that you are above the tomb and the body of
Mademoiselle de la Roche, who is buried beneath you, and whom you loved
so much in her lifetime. And since our souls have sense after our death,
it cannot be but that this faithful one, dead so lately, felt your
presence as soon as you came near her; and if you have not perceived it,
because of the thickness of the tomb, doubt not that none the less she
felt it. And forasmuch as it is a pious work to make memory of the dead,
and notably of those whom we loved, I pray you give her a _pater_ and an
_ave_, and likewise a _de profundis_, and pour out holy water. So
shall you make acquist of the name of a right faithful lover and a good