Florette – "Whether I will? To leave hell for paradise? Yes, I consent to follow you!"
Mylio (rises and listens in the direction of the hedge) – "It is the voice of Goose-Skin! He is calling for help! What can have happened!"
Florette (clasping her hands in despair) – "Oh! I knew it! It was a dream!"
Mylio (draws his sword and takes the girl's hand) – "Follow me, dear child; fear nothing. Mylio will know how to defend you."
The trouvere walks rapidly towards the hedge, holding Florette by the hand. The cries of Goose-Skin redouble in the measure that Mylio approaches the hedge that surrounds the garden of the mill, and behind which he causes Florette to conceal herself with the recommendation that she remain silent and motionless. He then leaps over the enclosure, and by the light of the moon he perceives the juggler puffing and blowing and wrestling with a man whose face is concealed under the hood of his brown cloak. At the sight of Mylio running to his help, Goose-Skin redoubles his efforts and succeeds in throwing his adversary down. Turning thereupon his own enormous weight to account, and thereby easily keeping the hooded man under him, the juggler, who is now out of breath with the struggle, lays himself face down, flat upon his adversary, who, feeling himself crushed under the extraordinary weight, gasps in a rage: "Wretch – vagabond – to – smother – me!"
Goose-Skin (panting for breath) – "Ouf! After victory how delightful, how glorious to rest on one's laurels! Victory! Victory, Mylio! The monster is overcome!"
The Hooded Man – "I die – under – this mountain of flesh! Help! Help! – I die – Help!"
Mylio – "My old Goose-Skin, I shall never forget the service that you have rendered me. Do not move. Keep that fellow down! Do not allow him to rise and flee."
Goose-Skin (stretching himself more and more at his ease over the prostrate body of his adversary) – "Even if I wanted to rise, I could not, I am so completely out of breath. Besides, I feel myself quite comfortable upon the round cushion under me."
The Hooded Man – "Help! Murder! This beggar is breaking my ribs – Help!"
Mylio (quickly stooping down) – "I know this voice! (He removes the hood that hides the face of the vanquished man) Abbot Reynier! The superior of the Abbey of Citeaux!"
Goose-Skin (with a rude up-and-down wabble that draws a moan from the monk) – "An abbot! I have the round body of an abbot for mattress! Oxhorns! Suppose I take a nap! I would surely dream of pretty nuns and good fare!"
Mylio (to the monk) – "Ha! Ha! Sir Ribald! Consumed by your lustful appetite you could not wait until to-morrow to eat the dainty dish of fritters that you yesterday spoke about to me. Aye, driven by your voracious hunger, you meant to introduce yourself this very night into the house of the infamous Chaillotte, feeling assured that she would be ready to dance attendance upon you at all hours! Ha! Ha! Sir Priapus! You are there like a fox caught in a trap!"
Goose-Skin – "I was hidden in the shadow, when I saw this fellow slinking up to the hedge and making ready to climb it. Like a true Caesar, I fell upon him when he was out of his balance – and I shall hold him. I am on top! The enemy is vanquished!"
Abbot Reynier – "Oh, you brace of vile jugglers! You will pay dearly for this outrage!"
Mylio – "You speak truly, Reynier, abbot superior of the monks of Citeaux of the Abbey of St. Victor! To-morrow it will be daylight, and that daylight will expose your shame! You tonsured hypocrites may impose upon simpletons and fools, but my valiant friend Goose-Skin and myself are neither simpletons nor poltroons! We also enjoy a certain power! Now, remember this, Sir Ribald. Should you be foolhardy enough to try to do us some injury in revenge for this night's affair, we shall put it into a song – Goose-Skin for the taverns, myself for the castles. By heaven! From one end of Gaul to the other the lay will be sung of 'Reynier, Abbot of Citeaux, going at night to snoop fritters at Chaillotte's, the miller's wife, and getting only blows for his pains.'"
Goose-skin – "You fat monastic debauchee, trust to me for adding all the needed zest to the music!"
Abbot Reynier (panting for breath) – "You are sacrilegious wretches – I am here at your mercy – I promise you to keep quiet. But, Mylio, are you after my life? Order this monstrous varlet of yours to roll off me – I am suffocating! Mercy!"
Mylio – "In order to be properly punished for having dreamed of a paradise of love, you may well tarry a little longer in purgatory, my chaste monk! You, Goose-Skin, keep him fast until you hear me cry: 'Good-evening, Sir Ribald!' You may then rise, and Seigneur Fox may run off with his ears hanging, and take shelter in his holy burrow. Here is my sword, with which you may keep this model of monastic chastity in check if he should endeavor to rebel against you. To-morrow morning, my valiant Caesar, I shall inform you of any further projects."
Goose-skin (takes up the sword, changes his posture in such a way that he sits squarely upon the monk's stomach, and, pointing the sword at the face of the prostrate man, says) – "You can go, Mylio; I shall wait for the signal."
The trouvere re-enters the garden and speedily issues out of it with Florette, whom he has wrapped in his cloak. He takes her in his arms and helps her leap over the hedge, and thereupon the two lovers walk rapidly towards the shaded road on which they presently disappear. At the sight of the young serf, whom he immediately recognizes, Abbot Reynier emits a deep sigh of grief and rage, a sigh that is rendered doubly doleful by the weight of the juggler, who, comfortably seated upon the monk's stomach, endeavors to while away the time both to himself and his prisoner by singing the following bucolic:
"Fresh when blooms the violet,
And the rose and gladiol',
When the nightingale's songs roll,
Then I'm lured in love's sweet net,
Sing a song much prettier yet,
For the love of my own pet,
For the love of my Gueulette."
Abbot Reynier (in a fainting voice) – "The vagabond – is – flattening out my intestines – he is pressing the life out of – me – "
Mylio (from the distance) – "Good-evening, Sir Ribald! I can hear you from afar!"
Goose-Skin (rises with difficulty by helping himself up with one hand; with the other he holds the sword pointed at the monk while he thus walks backward in the direction whence the voice of Mylio came) – "Good-evening, Sir Ribald! This is the moral of the adventure: 'He who fries the fish, often sees it eaten by another.'"
CHAPTER IV
THE GARDEN OF EGLANTINE
The night and two-thirds of the day have passed since the adventures of the previous evening. You now see, son of Joel, a long avenue of odoriferous trees that lead to the Court of Love, otherwise known as the "Session Under the Elm." The session is held in the garden of the castle of Eglantine, Viscountess of Seligny. On either side of the avenue, the walled ditches are filled with limpid water, where swans and other beautiful aquatic birds disport themselves. They swim and frolic in loving couples, and cut gracefully through the water. The golden fish in the canals, the twittering birds that flutter overhead from branch to branch, seem also to go in couples. Only a poor featherless turtle dove, perched on the top of a dead tree, utters plaintive notes in its lonely singleness. The long alley which is intersected only by the bridge of the canal, runs out upon a grass-plot that is studded with a thousand flowers and in the center of which a magnificent elm raises its majestic trunk, the thick foliage of whose branches builds a thick dome that is impenetrable to the rays of the sun. It is under this elm that are held the sessions of the Court of Love, a licentious tribunal that is also called the "Chamber of Sweet Vows." The court is presided over by a "Queen of Beauty," who represents Venus. The queen is Marphise, the Marchioness of Ariol. The assistant female judges are Deliane, the Canoness of Nivelle, Eglantine, Viscountess of Seligny, and Huguette of Montreuel. The