The king, although vexed could not repress a smile, and kept her on a month to silence scandal.  And last, la demoiselle de Pisseleu, anxious to obtain her place, brought about her ruin.  Many would have liked to be ruined in the same way, seeing she was taken by a young lord, was happy with him, the fires of love in her being still unquenched.  But to take up the thread again.  One day that the king’s sweetheart was passing through the town in her litter to buy laces, furs, velvets, broideries, and other ammunition, and so charmingly attired, and looking so lovely, that anyone, especially the clerks, would have believed the heavens were open above them, behold, her good man, who comes upon her near the old cross.  She, at that time lazily swinging her charming little foot over the side of the litter, drew in her head as though she had seen an adder.  She was a good wife, for I know some who would have proudly passed their husbands, to their shame and to the great disrespect of conjugal rights.

“What is the matter?” asked one M. de Lannoy, who humbly accompanied her.

“Nothing,” she whispered; “but that person is my husband.  Poor man, how changed he looks.  Formerly he was the picture of a monkey; today he is the very image of a Job.”

The poor advocate stood opened-mouthed.  His heart beat rapidly at the sight of that little foot—­of that wife so wildly loved.

Observing which, the Sire de Lannoy said to him, with courtly innocence—­

“If you are her husband, is that any reason you should stop her passage?”

At this she burst out laughing, and the good husband instead of killing her bravely, shed scalding tears at that laugh which pierced his heart, his soul, his everything, so much that he nearly tumbled over an old citizen whom the sight of the king’s sweetheart had driven against the wall.  The aspect of this weak flower, which had been his in the bud, but far from him had spread its lovely leaves; of the fairy figure, the voluptuous bust—­all this made the poor advocate more wretched and more mad for her than it is possible to express in words.  You must have been madly in love with a woman who refuses your advances thoroughly to understand the agony of this unhappy man.  Rare indeed is it to be so infatuated as he was.  He swore that life, fortune, honour—­all might go, but that for once at least he would be flesh-to-flesh with her, and make so grand a repast off her dainty body as would suffice him all his life.  He passed the night saying, “oh yes; ah!  I’ll have her!” and “Curses am I not her husband?” and “Devil take me,” striking himself on the forehead and tossing about.  There are chances and occasions which occur so opportunely in this world that little-minded men refuse them credence, saying they are supernatural, but men of high intellect know them to be true because they could not be invented.  One of the chances came to the poor advocate, even the day after that terrible one which had been so sore