1 The scene of this tale is laid at the castle where Margaret died.  Ste. Marthe in his Oraison funebre, pronounced at Alencon fifteen days after the Queen’s death, formally states that she expired at Odos near Tarbes.  He is not likely to have been mistaken, so that Brantome’s assertion that the Queen died at Audos in Beam may be accepted as incorrect (ante, vol. i. p. lxxxviii.).  It is further probable that the above tale was actually written at Odos (ante, vol. i. p. lxxxvi.), but the authenticity of the incidents is very doubtful, as there is an extremely similar story in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (No, xvii. Le Conseiller au bluteau), in which the hero of the adventure is a “great clerk and knight who presided over the Court of Accounts in Paris.”  For subsequent imitations see Malespini’s Ducento Novelle (No. xcvii.) and Les Joyeuses Adventures et Nouvelles Recreations (No. xix.)—­L. and Ed.

One day she hired a discreet and worthy girl, telling her of her husband’s temper and her own, and how she was wont to turn away such girls whom she found to be wantons.  This maid, wishing to continue in her mistress’s service and esteem, resolved to remain a virtuous woman; and although her master often spoke to her, she on her part gave no heed to his words save that she repeated them to her mistress, and they thus both derived much diversion from his folly.

One day the maid was in a back room bolting meal, and wearing her “sarot,” a kind of hood which, after the fashion of that country, not only formed a coif but covered the whole of the back and shoulders.  Her master, finding her in this trim, came and urged her very pressingly, and, although she would not have done such a thing even to save her life, she pretended to consent, and asked leave to go first and see whether her mistress was engaged in some such manner that they might not be surprised together.  To this he agreed; whereupon she begged him to put her hood upon his head and to continue bolting whilst she was away, in order that her mistress might still hear the noise of the bolter.  And this he gladly did, in the hope of obtaining what he sought.

The maid, who was by no means inclined to melancholy, ran off to her mistress and said to her—­

“Come and see your good husband, whom I have taught to bolt in order to be rid of him.”

The wife made all speed to behold this new serving-woman, and when she saw her husband with the hood upon his head and the bolter in his hands, she began to laugh so exceedingly, clapping her hands the while, that she was scarce able to say to him—­

“How much dost want a month, wench, for thy labour?”

The husband, on hearing this voice, realised that he had been deceived, and, throwing down both what he was holding and wearing, he ran at the girl, calling her a thousand bad names.  Had his wife not set herself in front of the maid, he would have given her wage enough for her quarter; but at last all was settled to the content of the parties concerned, and thenceforward they lived together without quarrelling. (2)