This one remained bashful, always stuck against the same pillar, never moving from it, but readily ravished with the sight alone of this lady whom he had chosen as his.  His pale face was softly melancholy.  His physiognomy gave proof of fine heart, one of those which nourish ardent passions and plunge delightedly into the despairs of love without hope.  Of these people there are few, because ordinarily one likes more a certain thing than the unknown felicities lying and flourishing at the bottommost depths of the soul.

This said gentleman, although his garments were well made, and clean and neat, having even a certain amount of taste shown in the arrangement, seemed to the constable’s wife to be a poor knight seeking fortune, and come from afar, with his nobility for his portion.  Now partly from a suspicion of his secret poverty, partly because she was well beloved by him and a little because he had a good countenance, fine black hair, and a good figure, and remained humble and submissive in all, the constable’s wife desired for him the favour of women and of fortune, not to let his gallantry stand idle, and from a good housewifely idea, she fired his imagination according to her fantasies, by certain small favours and little looks which serpented towards him like biting adders, trifling with the happiness of this young life, like a princess accustomed to play with objects more precious than a simple knight.  In fact, her husband risked the whole kingdom as you would a penny at piquet.  Finally it was only three days since, at the conclusion of vespers, that the constable’s wife pointed out to the queen this follower of love, said laughingly—­

“There’s a man of quality.”

This sentence remained in the fashionable language.  Later it became a custom so to designate the people of the court.  It was to the wife of the constable d’Armagnac, and to no other source, that the French language is indebted for this charming expression.

By a lucky chance the countess had surmised correctly concerning this gentleman.  He was a bannerless knight, named Julien de Boys-Bourredon, who not having inherited on his estate enough to make a toothpick, and knowing no other wealth than the rich nature with which his dead mother had opportunely furnished him, conceived the idea of deriving therefrom both rent and profit at court, knowing how fond ladies are of those good revenues, and value them high and dear, when they can stand being looked at between two suns.  There are many like him who have thus taken the narrow road of women to make their way; but he, far from arranging his love in measured qualities, spend funds and all, as soon as he came to the full-dress Mass, he saw the triumphant beauty of the Countess Bonne.  Then he fell really in love, which was a grand thing for his crowns, because he lost both thirst and appetite.  This love is of the worst kind, because it incites you to the love of diet, during the diet of love; a double malady, of which one is sufficient to extinguish a man.