This is what happened to the silversmith in the one-and-fortieth year of his age.  One Sabbath-day while walking on the left bank of the Seine, led by an idle fancy, he ventured as far as that meadow which has since been called the Pre-aux-Clercs and which at that time was in the domain of the abbey of St. Germain, and not in that of the University.  There, still strolling on the Touranian found himself in the open fields, and there met a poor young girl who, seeing that he was well-dressed, curtsied to him, saying “Heaven preserve you, monseigneur.”  In saying this her voice had such sympathetic sweetness that the silversmith felt his soul ravished by this feminine melody, and conceived an affection for the girl, the more so as, tormented with ideas of marriage as he was, everything was favourable thereto.  Nevertheless, as he had passed the wench by he dared not go back, because he was as timid as a young maid who would die in her petticoats rather than raise them for her pleasure.  But when he was a bowshot off he bethought him that he was a man who for ten years had been a master silversmith, had become a citizen, and was a man of mark, and could look a woman in the face if his fancy so led him, the more so as his imagination had great power over him.  So he turned suddenly back, as if he had changed the direction of his stroll, and came upon the girl, who held by an old cord her poor cow, who was munching grass that had grown on the border of a ditch at the side of the road.

“Ah, my pretty one,” said he, “you are not overburdened with the goods of this world that you thus work with your hands upon the Lord’s Day.  Are you not afraid of being cast into prison?”

“Monseigneur,” replied the maid, casting down her eyes, “I have nothing to fear, because I belong to the abbey.  The Lord Abbot has given me leave to exercise the cow after vespers.”

“You love your cow, then, more than the salvation of your soul?”

“Ah, monseigneur, our beast is almost the half of our poor lives.”

“I am astonished, my girl, to see you poor and in rags, clothed like a fagot, running barefoot about the fields on the Sabbath, when you carry about you more treasures than you could dig up in the grounds of the abbey.  Do not the townspeople pursue, and torment you with love?”

“Oh, never monseigneur.  I belong to the abbey”, replied she, showing the jeweller a collar on her left arm like those that the beasts of the field have, but without the little bell, and at the same time casting such a deplorable glance at our townsman that he was stricken quite sad, for by the eyes are communicated contagions of the heart when they are strong.

“And what does this mean?” he said, wishing to hear all about it.

And he touched the collar, upon which was engraved the arms of the abbey very distinctly, but which he did not wish to see.