With this statement she went away prettily and gracefully, smiling and thinking how she could commit a venial sin.  On her return from the great monastery, she saw in the courtyard of her castle the little Jallanges, who under the superintendence of an old groom was turning and wheeling about on a fine horse, bending with the movements of the animal, dismounting and mounting again with vaults and leaps most gracefully, and with lissome thighs, so pretty, so dextrous, so upright as to be indescribable, so much so, that he would have made the Queen Lucrece long for him, she who killed herself from having been contaminated against her will.

“Ah!” said Blanche, “if only this page were fifteen, I would go to sleep comfortably very near to him.”

Then, in spite of the too great youth of this charming servitor, during the collation and supper, she eyed frequently the black hair, the white skin, the grace of Rene, above all his eyes, where was an abundance of limpid warmth and a great fire of life, which he was afraid to shoot out—­child that he was.

Now in the evening, as the seneschal’s wife sat thoughtfully in her chair in the corner of the fireplace, old Bruyn interrogated her as to her trouble.

“I am thinking.” said she, “that you must have fought the battles of love very early, to be thus completely broken up.”

“Oh!” smiled he, smiling like all old men questioned upon their amorous remembrances, “at the age of thirteen and a half I had overcome the scruples of my mother’s waiting woman.”

Blanche wished to hear nothing more, but believed the page Rene should be equally advanced, and she was quite joyous and practised little allurements on the good man, and wallowed silently in her desire, like a cake which is being floured.

HOW AND BY WHOM THE SAID CHILD WAS PROCURED.

The seneschal’s wife did not think long over the best way quickly to awaken the love of the page, and had soon discovered the natural ambuscade in the which the most wary are taken.  This is how:  at the warmest hour of the day the good man took his siesta after the Saracen fashion, a habit in which he had never failed, since his return from the Holy Land.  During this time Blanche was alone in the grounds, where the women work at their minor occupations, such as broidering and stitching, and often remained in the rooms looking after the washing, putting the clothes tidy, or running about at will.  Then she appointed this quiet hour to complete the education of the page, making him read books and say his prayers.  Now on the morrow, when at the mid-day hour the seneschal slept, succumbing to the sun which warms with its most luminous rays the slopes of Roche-Corbon, so much so that one is obliged to sleep, unless annoyed, upset, and continually roused by a devil of a young woman.  Blanche then gracefully perched herself in the great seignorial chair of her good man, which she did not