upon her knee, she whose slipper princes found more to their taste
than that of the pope.

But he gazed at her in silence, with his eye so lustrous with love,
that she said to him, trembling with joy "Ah! be quiet, little one.
Let us have supper."



THE VENIAL SIN


HOW THE GOOD MAN BRUYN TOOK A WIFE.

Messire Bruyn, he who completed the Castle of Roche-Corbon-les-Vouvray,
on the banks of the Loire, was a boisterous fellow in his
youth. When quite little, he squeezed young ladies, turned the house
out of windows, and played the devil with everything, when he was
called upon to put his Sire the Baron of Roche-Corbon some few feet
under the turf. Then he was his own master, free to lead a life of
wild dissipation, and indeed he worked very hard to get a surfeit of
enjoyment. Now by making his crowns sweat and his goods scarce,
draining his land, and a bleeding his hogsheads, and regaling frail
beauties, he found himself excommunicated from decent society, and had
for his friends only the plunderers of towns and the Lombardians. But
the usurers turned rough and bitter as chestnut husks, when he had no
other security to give them than his said estate of Roche-Corbon,
since the Rupes Carbonis was held from our Lord the king. Then Bruyn
found himself just in the humour to give a blow here and there, to
break a collar-bone or two, and quarrel with everyone about trifles.