and dismissed
him with a gesture which the Pope Jehan himself would have obeyed,
especially as he was like a snail without a shell, since the Council
had just deprived him of the holy keys.

"Ah! Madame, there is another vow of chastity changed into an amorous
desire," said one of her women; and the chuckles commenced again thick
as hail.

Philippe went his way, bumping his head against a wall like a hooded
rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature,
even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the
animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the
archbishop with his head full of diabolical longings and his entrails
sophisticated.

Once in his little room he counted his coins all night long, but could
make no more than four of them; and as that was all his treasure, he
counted upon satisfying the fair one by giving her all he had in the
world.

"What is it ails you?" said the good archbishop, uneasy at the groans
and "oh! ohs!" of his clerk.

"Ah! my Lord," answered the poor priest, "I am wondering how it is
that so light and sweet a woman can weigh so heavily upon my heart."

"Which one?" said the archbishop, putting down his breviary which he
was reading for others--the good man.

"Oh! Mother of God! You will scold me, I know, my good master, my
protector, because I have seen the lady of a cardinal at the least,
and I am weeping because I lack more than one crown to enable me to
convert her."

The archbishop, knitting the circumflex accent that he had above his
nose, said not a word. Then the very humble priest trembled in his
skin to have confessed so much to his superior. But the holy man
directly said to him, "She must be very dear then--"

"Ah!" said he, "she has swallowed many a mitre and stolen many a
cross."

"Well, Philippe, if thou will renounce her, I will present thee with
thirty angels from the poor-box."

"Ah! my lord, I should be losing too much," replied the lad,
emboldened by the treat he promised himself.

"Ah! Philippe," said the good prelate, "thou wilt then go to the devil
and displease God, like all our cardinals," and the master, with
sorrow, began to pray St. Gatien, the patron saint of Innocents, to
save his servant. He made him kneel down beside him, telling him to
recommend himself also to St. Philippe, but the wretched priest
implored the saint beneath his breath to prevent him from failing if
on the morrow that the