charge of the masses said for children, and who received the said vows, she asked him if there were many barren women. To which the good priest replied, that he must not complain, and that the children were good revenue to the Church.     

       “And do you often see,” said Blanche, “young women with such old husbands as my lord?”      

       “Rarely,” said he.     

       “But have those obtained offspring?”      

       “Always,” replied the priest smiling.     

       “And the others whose companions are not so old?”      

       “Sometimes.”      

       “Oh! Oh!” said she, “there is more certainty then with one like the seneschal?”      

       “To be sure,” said the priest.     

       “Why?” said she.     

       “Madame,” gravely replied priest, “before that age God alone interferes with the affair, after, it is the men.”      

       At this time it was a true thing that all the wisdom had gone to the clergy. Blanch made her vow, which was a very profitable one, seeing that her decorations were worth quite two thousand gold crowns.     

       “You are very joyful!” said the old seneschal to her when on the home journey she made her mare prance, jump, and frisk.     

       “Yes, yes!” said she. “There is no longer any doubt about my having a child, because any one can help me, the priest said: I shall take Gauttier.”      

       The seneschal wished to go and slay the monk, but he thought that was a crime which would cost him too much, and he resolved cunningly to arrange his vengeance with the help of the archbishop; and before the housetops of Roche-Corbon came in sight he had ordered the Sire de Montsoreau to seek a little retirement in his own country, which the young Gauttier did, knowing the ways of the lord. The seneschal put in the place of the said Gauttier the son of the Sire de Jallanges, whose fief was 

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