“Come here, Rene; do you know that while I have only committed venial sins because I was asleep, you have committed mortal ones?”

“Ah, Madame!” said he, “where then will God stow away all the damned if that is to sin!”

Blanche burst out laughing, and kissed his forehead.

“Be quiet, you naughty boy; it is a question of paradise, and we must live there together if you wish always to be with me.”

“Oh, my paradise is here.”

“Leave off,” said she.  “You are a little wretch—­a scapegrace who does not think of that which I love—­yourself!  You do not know that I am with child, and that in a little while I shall be no more able to conceal it than my nose.  Now, what will the abbot say?  What will my lord say?  He will kill you if he puts himself in a passion.  My advice is little one, that you go to the abbot of Marmoustiers, confess your sins to him, asking him to see what had better be done concerning my seneschal.

“Alas,” said the artful page, “if I tell the secret of our joys, he will put his interdict upon our love.”

“Very likely,” said she; “but thy happiness in the other world is a thing so precious to me.”

“Do you wish it my darling?”

“Yes,” replied she rather faintly.

“Well, I will go, but sleep again that I may bid you adieu.”

And the couple recited the litany of Farewells as if they had both foreseen that their love must finish in its April.  And on the morrow, more to save his dear lady than to save himself, and also to obey her, Rene de Jallanges set out towards the great monastery.

HOW THE SAID LOVE-SIN WAS REPENTED OF AND LED TO GREAT MOURNING.

“Good God!” cried the abbot, when the page had chanted the Kyrie eleison of his sweet sins, “thou art the accomplice of a great felony, and thou has betrayed thy lord.  Dost thou know page of darkness, that for this thou wilt burn through all eternity? and dost thou know what it is to lose forever the heaven above for a perishable and changeful moment here below?  Unhappy wretch!  I see thee precipitated for ever in the gulfs of hell unless thou payest to God in this world that which thou owest him for such offence.”

Thereupon the good old abbot, who was of that flesh of which saints are made, and who had great authority in the country of Touraine, terrified the young man by a heap of representations, Christian discourses, remembrances of the commandments of the Church, and a thousand eloquent things—­as many as a devil could say in six weeks to seduce a maiden—­but so many that Rene, who was in the loyal fervour of innocence, made his submission to the good abbot.  The said abbot, wishing to make forever a good and virtuous man of this child, now in a fair way to be a wicked one, commanded him first to go and prostrate himself before his lord, to confess his conduct to him, and then if he escaped from this confession, to depart instantly for the Crusades, and go straight to the Holy Land, where he should remain fifteen years of the time appointed to give battle to the Infidels.