Claude Anseau was strongly built.  His arms were rounded and muscular, and his hand had the grip of an iron vice.  His broad shoulders reminded the learned of the giant Atlas; his white teeth seemed as if they were formed for masticating iron.  His countenance, though placid, was full of resolution, and his glance was so keen that it might have melted gold, though the limpid lustre of his eyes tempered their burning ardor.  In a word, though a peaceable man, the goldsmith was not one to be insulted with impunity, and perhaps it was a knowledge of his physical qualities that secured him from attack in those stormy days of ruffianly violence.

Yet sometimes, in spite of his accumulating wealth and tranquil life, the loneliness of the goldsmith made him restless.  He was not insensible to beauty, and often, as he wrought a wedding ring for the finger of some fair damsel, he thought with what delight he could forge one for some gentle creature who would love him for himself and not for the riches that called him lord.  Then he would sally forth and hie to the river-side, and pass long hours in the dreamy reveries of an artist.

One day as he was strolling, in this tender frame of mind, along the left bank of the Seine, he came to the meadow afterwards called the Pre aux Clercs, which was then in the domain of the Abbey of St. Germain, and not in that of the University.  There, finding himself in the open fields, he encountered a poor girl, who addressed him with the simple salutation:—­“God save you, my lord!”

The musical intonation of her voice, chiming in with the melodious images that then filled the goldsmith’s busy brain, impressed him so pleasantly that he turned, and saw that the damsel was holding a cow by a tether, while it was browsing the rank grass that grew upon the borders of a ditch.

“My child,” said he, “how is it that you are pasturing your cow on the Sabbath?  Know you not that it is forbidden, and that you are in danger of imprisonment?”

“My lord,” replied the girl, casting down her eyes, “I have nothing to fear, because I belong to the abbey.  My lord abbot has given us license to feed our cow here after sunset.”

“Then you love your cow better than the safety of your soul,” said the goldsmith.

“Of a truth, my lord, the animal furnishes half our subsistence.”

“I marvel,” said the good goldsmith, “to see you thus poorly clad and barefoot on the Sabbath.  Thou art fair to look upon, and thou must needs have suitors from the city.”

“Nay, my lord,” replied the girl, showing a bracelet that clasped her rounded left arm; “I belong to the abbey.”  And she cast so sad a look on the good burgess that his heart sank within him.

“How is this?” he resumed,—­and he touched the bracelet, whereon were engraven the arms of the Abbey of St. Germain.

“My lord, I am the daughter of a serf.  Thus, whoever should unite himself to me in marriage would become a serf himself, were he a burgess of Paris, and would belong, body and goods, to the abbey.  For this reason I am shunned by every one.  But it is not this that saddens me—­it is the dread of being married to a serf by command of my lord abbot, to perpetuate a race of slaves.  Were I the fairest in the land, lovers would avoid me like the plague.”