“She went into that closet, and methought she was ill.”

The gentleman asked whether he would be pleased to let him go in, and the Duke begged him to do so.  When he entered the closet he found the Lady du Vergier, come to the last stage of her mortal life; whereat, throwing his arms about her, he said—­

“What is this, sweetheart?  Would you leave me?”

The poor lady, hearing the voice that she knew so well, recovered a little strength and opened her eyes to look upon him who was the cause of her death; but at this look her love and anguish waxed so great that, with a piteous sigh, she yielded up her soul to God.

The gentleman, more dead than the dead woman herself, asked the damsel who was there how this sickness had come upon his sweetheart, and she told him all the words that she had heard.  Then the gentleman knew that the Duke had revealed the secret to his wife, and felt such frenzy that, whilst embracing his sweetheart’s body, he for a long time watered it with his tears, saying—­

“O traitorous, wicked and unhappy lover that I am! why has not the punishment of my treachery fallen upon me, and not upon her who is innocent?  Why was I not struck by a bolt from heaven on the day when my tongue revealed the secret and virtuous love between us?  Why did not the earth open to swallow up this traitor to his troth?  O tongue, mayest thou be punished as was the tongue of the wicked rich man in hell!

“O heart, too fearful of death and banishment, mayest thou be torn continually by eagles as was the heart of Ixion! (3)

     3 Queen Margaret’s memory plainly failed her here.—­Ed.

“Alas, sweetheart, the greatest of all the greatest woes has fallen upon me!  I thought to keep you, but I have lost you; I thought to see you for a long time and to abide with you in sweet and honourable content, yet now I embrace your dead body, and you passed away in sore displeasure with me, with my heart and with my tongue.  O most loyal and faithful of women, I do confess myself the most disloyal, fickle and faithless of all men.  Gladly would I complain of the Duke in whose promise I trusted, hoping thus to continue our happy life; but alas!  I should have known that none could keep our secret better than I kept it myself.  The Duke had more reason in telling his secret to his wife than I in telling mine to him.  I accuse none but myself of the greatest wickedness that was ever done between lovers.  I ought to have submitted to be cast into the moat as he threatened to do with me; at least, sweetheart, you would then have lived in widowhood and I have died a glorious death in observing the law that true love enjoins.  But through breaking it I am now in life, and you, through perfectness of love, are dead; for your pure, clear heart could not bear to know the wickedness of your lover.