half the realm was hunting Perion de la Foret in the more customary
haunts of rascality. The springs of Perion's turbulent mirth were that
to-morrow every person in the room would discover how impudently every
person had been tricked, and that Melicent deliberated even now, and
could not but admire, the hunted outlaw's insolence, however much she
loathed its perpetrator; and over this thought in particular Perion
laughed like a madman.

"You are very gay to-night, Messire de Puysange," said the Bishop of
Montors.

This remarkable young man, it is necessary to repeat, had reached
Bellegarde that evening, coming from Brunbelois. It was he (as you have
heard) who had arranged the match with Theodoret. The bishop himself
loved his cousin Melicent; but, now that he was in holy orders and
possession of her had become impossible, he had cannily resolved to
utilise her beauty, as he did everything else, toward his own
preferment.

"Oh, sir," replied Perion, "you who are so fine a poet must surely know
that _gay_ rhymes with _to-day_ as patly as _sorrow_ goes with
_to-morrow_."

"Yet your gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath:
and _breath_ also"--the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's--"has a
hackneyed rhyme."

"Indeed, it is the grim rhyme that rounds off and silences all our
rhyming," Perion assented. "I must laugh, then, without rhyme or
reason."