educated with the nuns of Fontevrault. The parents of these young ladies
respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the
innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the
abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three
secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the
youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.

"The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a
wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they
participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough."

"Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?"
resumed the King. "Perhaps she is ignorant of it. I am going to tell
you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the
books, and I take the facts from good authority. You must hear of it,
and you will see.

"There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had
given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world. This man would
have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and
day, what we call, in hunter's parlance, 'big game.' Having won the
victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this
quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin. The
young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy. She was filled with
repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it
troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.

"Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the
world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible
head of a wild boar! Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair! The