“What does this mean?” said the Lady of Beaute.

“Friar . . . fryer . . . an equivoque,” answered the king, smiling.

“Come to supper,” said Madame Agnes.  “You are bad men, who with one word insult both the citizens’ wives and a holy order.”

Now, for a long time, Madame Petit had longed to have a night of liberty, during which she might visit the house of the said noble, where she could make as much noise as she liked, without waking the neighbours, because at the provost’s house she was afraid of being overheard, and had to content herself well with the pilferings of love, little tastes, and nibbles, daring at the most only to trot, while what she desired was a smart gallop.  On the morrow, therefore, the lady’s-maid went off about midday to the young lord’s house, and told the lover—­from whom she received many presents, and therefore in no way disliked him—­that he might make his preparations for pleasure, and for supper, for that he might rely upon the provost’s better half being with him in the evening both hungry and thirsty.

“Good!” said he.  “Tell your mistress I will not stint her in anything she desires.”

The pages of the cunning constable, who were watching the house, seeing the gallant prepare for his gallantries, and set out the flagons and the meats, went and informed their master that everything had happened as he wished.  Hearing this, the good constable rubbed his hands thinking how nicely the provost would catch the pair.  He instantly sent word to him, that by the king’s express commands he was to return to town, in order that he might seize at the said lord’s house an English nobleman, with whom he was vehemently suspected to be arranging a plot of diabolical darkness.  But before he put this order into execution, he was to come to the king’s hotel, in order that he might understand the courtesy to be exercised in this case.  The provost, joyous at the chance of speaking to the king, used such diligence that he was in town just at that time when the two lovers were singing the first note of their evening hymn.  The lord of cuckoldom and its surrounding lands, who is a strange lord, managed things so well, that madame was only conversing with her lord lover at the time that her lord spouse was talking to the constable and the king; at which he was pleased, and so was his wife—­a case of concord rare in matrimony.

“I was saying to monseigneur,” said the constable to the provost, as he entered the king’s apartment, “that every man in the kingdom has a right to kill his wife and her lover if he finds them in an act of infidelity.  But his majesty, who is clement, argues that he has only a right to kill the man, and not the woman.  Now what would you do, Mr. Provost, if by chance you found a gentleman taking a stroll in that fair meadow of which laws, human and divine, enjoin you alone to cultivate the verdure?”

“I would kill everything,” said the provost; “I would scrunch the five hundred thousand devils of nature, flower and seed, and send them flying, the pips and apples, the grass and the meadow, the woman and the man.”