To show her there and then how much better was the method of lovers, he sucked all the honey from Bertha’s lips, and taught her how, with her pretty tongue, small and rosy as that of a cat, she could speak to the heart without saying a single word, and becoming exhausted at this game, Jehan spread the fire of his kisses from the mouth to the neck, from the neck to the sweetest forms that ever a woman gave a child to slake its thirst upon.  And whoever had been in his place would have thought himself a wicked man not to imitate him.

“Ah!” said Bertha, fast bound in love without knowing it; “this is better.  I must take care to tell Imbert about it.”

“Are you in your proper senses, cousin?  Say nothing about it to your old husband.  How could he make his hands pleasant like mine?  They are as hard as washerwoman’s beetles, and his piebald beard would hardly please this centre of bliss, that rose in which lies our wealth, our substance, our loves, and our fortune.  Do you know that it is a living flower, which should be fondled thus, and not used like a trombone, or as if it were a catapult of war?  Now this was the gentle way of my beloved Englishman.”

Thus saying, the handsome youth comported himself so bravely in the battle that victory crowned his efforts, and poor innocent Bertha exclaimed—­

“Ah! cousin, the angels are come! but so beautiful is the music, that I hear nothing else, and so flaming are their luminous rays, that my eyes are closing.”

And, indeed, she fainted under the burden of those joys of love which burst forth in her like the highest notes of the organ, which glistened like the most magnificent aurora, which flowed in her veins like the finest musk, and loosened the liens of her life in giving her a child of love, who made a great deal of confusion in taking up his quarters.  Finally, Bertha imagined herself to be in Paradise, so happy did she feel; and woke from this beautiful dream in the arms of Jehan, exclaiming—­

“Ah! who would not have been married in England!”

“My sweet mistress,” said Jehan, whose ecstasy was sooner over, “you are married to me in France, where things are managed still better, for I am a man who would give a thousand lives for you if he had them.”

Poor Bertha gave a shriek so sharp that it pierced the walls, and leapt out of bed like a mountebank of the plains of Egypt would have done.  She fell upon her knees before her Prie-Dieu, joined her hands, and wept more pearls than ever Mary Magdalene wore.

“Ah!  I am dead” she cried; “I am deceived by a devil who has taken the face of an angel.  I am lost; I am the mother for certain of a beautiful child, without being more guilty than you, Madame the Virgin.  Implore the pardon of God for me, if I have not that of men upon earth; or let me die, so that I may not blush before my lord and master.”

Hearing that she said nothing against him, Jehan rose, quite aghast to see Bertha take this charming dance for two so to heart.  But the moment she heard her Gabriel moving she sprang quickly to her feet, regarded him with a tearful face, and her eye illumined with a holy anger, which made her more lovely to look upon, exclaimed—­