night of love, by a dextrous turn, plucked out one of his wife’s hairs, where from I know not, seeing I was not there, and kept in his hand this precious gauge of the warm virtue of that lovely creature.  Towards the morning, when the cock crew, the wife slipped in beside her husband, and pretended to sleep.  Then the maid tapped gently on the happy man’s forehead, whispering in his ear, “It is time, get into your clothes and off you go—­it’s daylight.”  The good man grieved to lose his treasure, and wished to see the source of his vanished happiness.

“Oh!  Oh!” said he, proceeding to compare certain things, “I’ve got light hair, and this is dark.”

“What have you done?” said the servant; “Madame will see she has been duped.”

“But look.”

“Ah!” said she, with an air of disdain, “do you not know, you who knows everything, that that which is plucked dies and discolours?” and thereupon roaring with laughter at the good joke, she pushed him out of doors.  This became known.  The poor advocate, named Feron, died of shame, seeing that he was the only one who had not his own wife while she, who was from this was called La Belle Feroniere, married, after leaving the king, a young lord, Count of Buzancois.  And in her old days she would relate the story, laughingly adding, that she had never scented the knave’s flavour.

This teaches us not to attach ourselves more than we can help to wives who refuse to support our yoke.

THE DEVIL’S HEIR

There once was a good old canon of Notre Dame de Paris, who lived in a fine house of his own, near St. Pierre-aux-Boeufs, in the Parvis.  This canon had come a simple priest to Paris, naked as a dagger without its sheath.  But since he was found to be a handsome man, well furnished with everything, and so well constituted, that if necessary he was able to do the work of many, without doing himself much harm, he gave himself up earnestly to the confessing of ladies, giving to the melancholy a gentle absolution, to the sick a drachm of his balm, to all some little dainty.  He was so well known for his discretion, his benevolence, and other ecclesiastical qualities, that he had customers at Court.  Then in order not to awaken the jealousy of the officials, that of the husbands and others, in short, to endow with sanctity these good and profitable practices, the Lady Desquerdes gave him a bone of St. Victor, by virtue of which all the miracles were performed.  And to the curious it was said, “He has a bone which will cure everything;” and to this, no one found anything to reply, because it was not seemly to suspect relics.  Beneath the shade of his cassock, the good priest had the best of reputations, that of a man valiant under arms.  So he lived like a king.  He made money with holy water; sprinkled it and transmitted the holy water into good wine.  More than that, his name lay snugly in all the et ceteras of the notaries, in wills or in caudicils,