The captain, confident in his agent, came to salute his lord, thinking to do honour for his fief.  Thereupon the king said to him, in a jocular manner, that the Spanish ladies were of a passable temperature, and their system a fair one, but that when gentleness was required they substituted frenzy; that he kept fancying each thrill was a sneeze, or a case of violence; in short, that the embrace of a French woman brought back the drinker more thirsty than ever, tiring him never; and that with the ladies of his court, love was a gentle pleasure without parallel, and not the labour of a master baker in his kneading trough.

The poor captain was strongly piqued at his language.  In spite of the nice sense of honour which the king pretended to possess, he fancied that his majesty wished to bilk him like a student, stealing a slice of love at a brothel in Paris.  Nevertheless, not knowing for the matter of that, if the Marchesa had not over-spanished the king, he demanded his revenge from the captive, pledging him his word, that he should have for certain a veritable fay, and that he would yet gain the fief.  The king was too courteous and gallant a knight to refuse this request, and even made a pretty and right royal speech, intimating his desire to lose the wager.  Then, after vespers, the guard passed fresh and warm into the king’s chamber, a lady most dazzlingly white—­most delicately wanton, with long tresses and velvet hands, filling out her dress at the least movement, for she was gracefully plump, with a laughing mouth, and eyes moist in advance, a woman to beautify hell, and whose first word had such cordial power that the king’s garment was cracked by it.  On the morrow, after the fair one had slipped out after the king’s breakfast, the good captain came radiant and triumphant into the chamber.

At sight of him the prisoner then exclaimed—­

“Baron de la Ville-aux-Dames!  God grant you joys like to mine!  I like my jail!  By’r lady, I will not judge between the love of our lands, but pay the wager.”

“I was sure of it,” said the captain.

“How so?” said the King.

“Sire, it was my wife.”

This was the origin of Larray de la Ville-aux-Dames in our country, since from corruption of the names, that of Lara-y-Lopez, finished by becoming Larray.  It was a good family, delighting in serving the kings of France, and it multiplied exceedingly.  Soon after, the Queen of Navarre came in due course to the king, who, weary of Spanish customs, wished to disport himself after the fashion of France; but remainder is not the subject of this narrative.  I reserve to myself the right to relate elsewhere how the legate managed to sponge the sin of the thing off the great slate, and the delicate remark of our Queen of Marguerites, who merits a saint’s niche in this collection; she who first concocted such good stories.  The morality of this one is easy to understand.