A few months before the last rebellion of the Dauphin Louis against his father, the boy was treading closely on the heels of his twelfth year, and appeared likely to become a great savant, so learned was he in all the sciences.  Old Bastarnay had never been more delighted at having been a father in his life, and resolved to take his son with him to the Court of Burgundy, where Duke Charles promised to make for this well-beloved son a position, which should be the envy of princes, for he was not at all averse to clever people.  Seeing matters thus arranged, the devil judged the time to be ripe for his mischiefs.  He took his tail and flapped it right into the middle of this happiness, so that he could stir it up in his own peculiar way.

III
HORRIBLE CHASTISEMENT OF BERTHA AND EXPIATION OF THE SAME,
WHO DIED PARDONED

The servant of the lady of Bastarnay, who was then about five-and-thirty years old, fell in love with one of the master’s men-at-arms, and was silly enough to let him take loaves out of the oven, until there resulted therefrom a natural swelling, which certain wags in these parts call a nine months’ dropsy.  The poor woman begged her mistress to intercede for her with the master, so that he might compel this wicked man to finish at the altar that which he had commenced elsewhere.  Madame de Bastarnay had no difficulty in obtaining this favour from him, and the servant was quite satisfied.  But the old warrior, who was always extremely rough, hastened into his pretorium, and blew him up sky-high, ordering him, under the pain of the gallows, to marry the girl; which the soldier preferred to do, thinking more of his neck than of his peace of mind.

Bastarnay sent also for the female, to whom he imagined, for the honour of his house, he ought to sing a litany, mixed with epithets and ornamented with extremely strong expressions, and made her think, by way of punishment, that she was not going to be married, but flung into one of the cells in the jail.  The girl fancied that Madame wanted to get rid of her, in order to inter the secret of the birth of her beloved son.  With this impression, when the old ape said such outrageous things to her—­namely, that he must have been a fool to keep a harlot in his house—­she replied that he certainly was a very big fool, seeing that for a long time past his wife had been played the harlot, and with a monk too, which was the worst thing that could happen to a warrior.

Think of the greatest storm you ever saw it in your life, and you will have a weak sketch of the furious rage into which the old man fell, when thus assailed in a portion of his heart which was a triple life.  He seized the girl by the throat, and would have killed her there and then, but she, to prove her story, detailed the how, the why, and the when, and said that if he had no faith in her, he could have the evidence of his own ears by hiding himself the day that Father Jehan de Sacchez, the prior of Marmoustier, came.  He would then hear the words of the father, who solaced herself for his year’s fast, and in one day kissed his son for the rest of the year.