With these words she hugged him to her breasts, as only mothers know how to hug children, with a spiritual force that is felt only in their hearts.  If you doubt this, watch a cat carrying her kittens in her mouth, not one of them gives a single mew.  The youthful gallant, who had certain fears about watering this fair, unfertile plain, was reassured by this speech.  He thought then that it would only be following the commandments of God to win this saint to love; and he thought right.  At night Bertha asked her cousin—­according to the old custom, to which the ladies of our day object—­to keep her company in her big seigneurial bed.  To which request Sylvia replied—­in order to keep up the role of a well-born maiden—­that nothing would give her greater pleasure.  The curfew rang, and found the two cousins in a chamber richly ornamented with carpeting, fringes, and royal tapestries, and Bertha began gracefully to disarray herself, assisted by her women.  You can imagine that her companion modestly declined their services, and told her cousin, with a little blush, that she was accustomed to undress herself ever since she had lost the services of her dearly beloved, who had put her out of conceit with feminine fingers by his gentle ways; that these preparations brought back the pretty speeches he used to make, and his merry pranks while playing the lady’s-maid; and that to her injury, the memory of all these things brought the water into her mouth.

This discourse considerably astonished the lady Bertha, who let her cousin say her prayers, and make other preparations for the night beneath the curtains of the bed, into which my lord, inflamed with desire, soon tumbled, happy at being able to catch an occasional glimpse of the wondrous charms of the chatelaine, which were in no way injured.  Bertha, believing herself to be with an experienced girl, did not omit any of the usual practices; she washed her feet, not minding whether she raised them little or much, exposed her delicate little shoulders, and did as all the ladies do when they are retiring to rest.  At last she came to bed, and settled herself comfortably in it, kissing her cousin on the lips, which she found remarkably warm.

“Are you unwell, Sylvia, that you burn so?” said she.

“I always burn like that when I go to bed,” replied her companion, “because at that time there comes back to my memory the pretty little tricks that he invented to please me, and which make me burn still more.”

“Ah! cousin, tell me all about this he.  Tell all the sweets of love to me, who live beneath the shadow of a hoary head, of which the snows keep me from such warm feelings.  Tell me all; you are cured.  It will be a good warning to me, and then your misfortunes will have been a salutary lesson to two poor weak women.”

“I do not know I ought to obey you, sweet cousin,” said the youth.

“Tell me, why not?”

“Ah! deeds are better than words,” said the false maiden, heaving a deep sigh as the ut of an organ.  “But I am afraid that this milord has encumbered me with so much joy that you may get a little of it, which would be enough to give you a daughter, since the power of engendering is weakened in me.”