"Do not move," cried the blushing Imperia, more lovely with passion
than she was with love, because now she was possessed both with
passion and love. "Stop, my friend. Here you are in your own house."
Then he knew that he was really loved by her.

"It is it not in the breviary, and an evangelical regulation, that you
should be equal with God in the valley of Jehoshaphat?" asked she of
the bishop.

"'Tis is an invention of the devil, who has adulterated the holy
book," replied the great numskull of a bishop in a hurry to fall to.

"Well then, be equal now before me, who am here below your goddess,"
replied Imperia, "otherwise one of these days I will have you
delicately strangled between the head and shoulders; I swear it by the
power of my tonsure which is as good as the pope's." And wishing that
the trout should be added to the feast as well as the sweets and other
dainties, she added, cunningly, "Sit you down and drink with us." But
the artful minx, being up to a trick or two, gave the little one a
wink which told him plainly not to mind the German, whom she would
soon find a means to be rid of.

The servant-maid seated the Bishop at the table, and tucked him up,
while Philippe, wild with rage that closed his mouth, because he saw
his plans ending in smoke, gave the archbishop to more devils than
ever were monks alive. Thus they got halfway through the repast, which
the young priest had not yet touched, hungering only for Imperia, near
whom he was already seated, but speaking that sweet language which the
ladies so well understand, that has neither stops, commas, accents,
letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images. The fat bishop,