by slow fire that shall make thee curse twenty times an hour thy villainous and ribald partner!”
Hearing the commencement of these little speeches of the seneschal, whose youth came back in his oaths, the page ran away, escaping the rest: and he did well. Bruyn, burning with a fierce rage, gained the gardens speedily, reviling everything by the way, striking and swearing; he even knocked over three large pans held by one of his servants, was carrying the mess to the dogs, and he was so beside himself that he would have killed a labourer for a “thank you.” He soon perceived his unmaidenly maiden, who was looking towards the road to the monastery, waiting for the page, and unaware that she would never see him again.
“Ah, my lady! By the devil’s red three-pronged fork, am I a swallower of tarradiddles and a child, to believe that you are so fashioned that a page can behave in this manner and you not know it? By the death! By the head! By the blood!”
“Hold!” she replied, seeing that the mine was sprung, “I knew it well enough, but as you had not instructed me in these matters I thought that I was dreaming!”
The great ire of the seneschal melted like snow in the sun, for the direst anger of God himself would have vanished at a smile from Blanche.
“May a thousand millions of devils carry off this alien child! I swear that—”
“There! there! do not swear,” said she. “If it is not yours, it is mine; and the other night did you not tell me you loved everything that came from me?”
Thereupon she ran on with such a lot of arguments, hard words, complaints, quarrels, tears, and other paternosters of women; such as —firstly the estates would not have to be returned to the king; that never had a child been brought more innocently into the world, that this, that that, a thousand things; until the good cuckold relented, and Blanche, seizing a propitious interruption said—
“And where it is the page?”
“Gone to the devil!”
“What, have you killed him?” said she. She turned pale and tottered.
Bruyn did not know what
Prev.
Back
Top