On the day of which I speak it chanced that they two fell talking, and when Aurelius saw his time, “Madam,” said he, “’tis in your power to save me or to slay me, for I love you better than any woman alive.  If you will not love me then I must die, for without you life is all pain and woe.”  When she heard this she answered, “Is this what you meant, Aurelius, by those sad looks of yours?  Never before could I guess.  But your sighs are all in vain.  I love my husband, and never shall I love another man in my life.”  So much she said, and then in jest she added, “Yet on my honour, there is one way for you to win my love.  Go, sink all the black rocks that fringe this coast deep beneath the sea.  If you do this, then I may be your love.”  At this cruel answer Aurelius went home in deep grief and cast him down and wept till the glorious sun had set in gloom, and hid his face beneath the dusky west—­(for, gentles, this is how the poets say that night has fallen!).

Then all beside himself with grief, he prayed first to Phoebus that he would help him, and then to Phoebus’ sister the moon.  “Lady that rulest the tides of the sea,” he pleaded, “do now this favour for me.  When next thou art at the full, check thy course a little, and travel no faster than thy brother, the sun.  Then shalt thou stay ever at the full and ever shall there be high tide on this coast.  Thus do thou for two years, and I can show my lady that not a rock is to be seen.”  He was still praying madly in this wise when his brother came and found him, and bore him to bed.  Soon after this, Knight Averagus came home covered with glory, to find his faithful wife Dorigen awaiting him with joy.

For two years more Aurelius lay in torment on his bed of sickness.  His only comfort was his brother, who tended him as well as he could and devised all manner of means to rid him of his pain.  At last he remembered how, when he was a student at Orleans, he one day saw a fellow-student reading secretly a book of magic.  This book spoke of the eight-and-twenty mansions of the moon, and much other such folly that we do not waste our time on nowadays, for Holy Church keeps us clear of such delusions.  When he remembered this his heart was filled with joy, and he was sure that by some such means he would be able to work his brother’s cure.  “Why,” he thought, “conjurers can make all manner of strange sights appear in a hall.  They can bring in barges and water and lions and make grape-vines spring up, and all this is but seeming, there is no reality behind it.  If at Orleans I found some of my old companions, they might in the same way make all the rocks appear to be gone, and then my brother could claim his lady.”