the fairest of women, as all learned clerks avow; and she is dead these
many years, and now there is no woman left alive so beautiful as
she--saving one alone, and she will have none of me. And therefore," he
added, very slowly, "I sigh for desire of Dame Venus and for envy of the
knight Tannhaeuser."

Again Melite laughed, but she forbore--discreetly enough--to question him
concerning the lady who was of equal beauty with Dame Venus.

It was an April morning, and they set in the hedged garden of Puysange.
Adhelmar read to her of divers ancient queens and of the love-business
wherein each took part, relating the histories of the Lady Heleine and of
her sweethearting with Duke Paris, the Emperor of Troy's son, and of the
Lady Melior that loved Parthenopex of Blois, and of the Lady Aude, for
love of whom Sieur Roland slew the pagan Angoulaffre, and of the Lady
Cresseide that betrayed love, and of the Lady Morgaine la Fee, whose
Danish lover should yet come from Avalon to save France in her black hour
of need. All these he read aloud, suavely, with bland modulations, for he
was a man of letters, as letters went in those days. Originally, he had
been bred for the Church; but this vocation he had happily forsaken long
since, protesting with some show of reason that France at this particular
time had a greater need of spears than of aves.

For the rest, Sir Adhelmar de Nointel was known as a valiant knight, who
had won glory in the wars with the English. He had lodged for a fortnight
at Puysange, of which castle the master, Sire Reinault (son to the late
Vicomte Florian) was Adhelmar's cousin: and on the next day Adhelmar
proposed to set forth for Paris, where the French King--Jehan the
Luckless--was gathering his lieges about him to withstand his kinsman,
Edward of England.