Then she burst out laughing.  Philippe, struck motionless, stood quite at his ease, letting wander over her his eyes that glowed and sparkled with the flame of love.  What lovely thick hair hung upon her ivory white back, showing sweet white places, fair and shining between the many tresses!  She had upon her snow-white brow a ruby circlet, less fertile in rays of fire than her black eyes, still moist with tears from her hearty laugh.  She even threw her slipper at a statue gilded like a shrine, twisting herself about from very ribaldry and allowed her bare foot, smaller than a swan’s bill, to be seen.  This evening she was in a good humour, otherwise she would have had the little shaven-crop put out by the window without more ado than her first bishop.

“He has fine eyes, Madame,” said one of her handmaids.

“Where does he comes from?” asked another.

“Poor child!” cried Madame, “his mother must be looking for him.  Show him his way home.”

The Touranian, still sensible, gave a movement of delight at the sight of the brocaded bed where the sweet form was about to repose.  This glance, full of amorous intelligence, awoke the lady’s fantasy, who, half laughing and half smitten, repeated “To-morrow,” and dismissed him with a gesture which the Pope Jehan himself would have obeyed, especially as he was like a snail without a shell, since the Council had just deprived him of the holy keys.

“Ah!  Madame, there is another vow of chastity changed into an amorous desire,” said one of her women; and the chuckles commenced again thick as hail.

Philippe went his way, bumping his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was.  So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water.  He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical longings and his entrails sophisticated.

Once in his little room he counted his coins all night long, but could make no more than four of them; and as that was all his treasure, he counted upon satisfying the fair one by giving her all he had in the world.

“What is it ails you?” said the good archbishop, uneasy at the groans and “oh! ohs!” of his clerk.

“Ah! my Lord,” answered the poor priest, “I am wondering how it is that so light and sweet a woman can weigh so heavily upon my heart.”

“Which one?” said the archbishop, putting down his breviary which he was reading for others—­the good man.

“Oh!  Mother of God!  You will scold me, I know, my good master, my protector, because I have seen the lady of a cardinal at the least, and I am weeping because I lack more than one crown to enable me to convert her.”

The archbishop, knitting the circumflex accent that he had above his nose, said not a word.  Then the very humble priest trembled in his skin to have confessed so much to his superior.  But the holy man directly said to him, “She must be very dear then—­”