Hearing this, the advocate sprang to the window, and beheld my gentleman.

“Ha! you want lords, my dear, do you?” said the advocate, dragging her by the arm, and throwing her like one of his bags on to the bed.  “Remember that if I have a pencase at my side instead of a sword, I have a penknife in this pencase, and that penknife will go into your heart on the least suspicion of conjugal impropriety.  I believe I have seen that gentleman somewhere.”

The advocate was so terribly spiteful that the lady rose, and said to him—­

“Well, kill me.  I am not afraid of deceiving you.  Never touch me again, after having thus menaced me.  And from to-day I shall never think of sleeping save with a lover more gentle than you are.”

“There, there, my little one!” said the advocate, surprised.  “We have gone a little too far.  Kiss me, chick-a-biddy, and forgive me.”

“I will neither kiss nor pardon you,” said she “You are a wretch!”

Avenelles, enraged, wished to take by force that which his wife denied him, and from this resulted a combat, from which the husband emerged clawed all over.  But the worst of it was, that the advocate, covered with scratches, being expected by the conspirators, who were holding a council, was obliged to quit his good wife, leaving her to the care of the old woman.

The knave having departed, the gentleman putting one of his servants to keep watch at the corner of the street, mounts to his blessed trap, lifts it noiselessly, and calls the lady by a gentle psit! psit! which was understood by the heart, which generally understands everything.  The lady lifts her head, and sees her pretty lover four flea jumps above her.  Upon a sign, she takes hold of two cords of black silk, to which were attached loops, through which she passes her arms, and in the twinkling of an eye is translated by two pulleys from her bed through the ceiling into the room above, and the trap closing as it has opened, left the old duenna in a state of great flabbergastation, when, turning her head, she neither saw robe nor woman, and perceived that the women had been robbed.  How? by whom? in what way? where?  —­Presto!  Foro!  Magico!  As much knew the alchemists at their furnaces reading Herr Trippa.  Only the old woman knew well the crucible, and the great work—­the one was cuckoldom, and the other the private property of Madame Advocate.  She remained dumbfounded, watching for the Sieur Avenelles—­as well say death, for in his rage he would attack everything, and the poor duenna could not run away, because with great prudence the jealous man had taken the keys with him.  At first sight, Madame Avenelles found a dainty supper, a good fire in the grate, but a better in the heart of her lover, who seized her, and kissed her, with tears of joy, on the eyes first of all, to thank them for their sweet glances during devotion at the church of St Jehan en Greve.  Nor did the glowing better half of the lawyer refuse her little