doublet caught on a projection, and the dead man cried, "Ah, my
doublet!"

"He groans," said the culprit, with a sigh of relief. The Regent's
servants (for this was the house of the Regent, the daughter of King
Louis XI. of virtuous memory) brought Jacques de Beaune into a room,
and laid him stiff and stark upon a table, not thinking for a moment
that he could be saved.

"Run and fetch a surgeon," cried Madame de Beaujeu. "Run here, run
there!"

The servants were down the stairs in a trice. The good lady Regent
dispatched her attendants for ointment, for linen to bind the wounds,
for goulard-water, for so many things, that she remained alone. Gazing
upon this splendid and senseless man, she cried aloud, admiring his
presence and his features, handsome even in death. "Ah! God wishes to
punish me. Just for one little time in my life has there been born in
me, and taken possession of me, a naughty idea, and my patron saint is
angry, and deprives me of the sweetest gentleman I have ever seen. By
the rood, and by the soul of my father, I will hang every man who has
had a hand in this!"

"Madame," cried Jacques de Beaune, springing from the table, and
falling at the feet of the Regent, "I will live to serve you, and am
so little bruised that that I promise you this night as many joys as
there are months in the year, in imitation of the Sieur Hercules, a
pagan baron. For the last twenty days," he went on (thinking that
matters would be smoothed by a little lying), "I have met you again
and again. I fell madly in love with you, yet dared not, by reason of