And, first of all, she says, "How long I have been looking for you!
Why did you leave your faithful wife so long a languishing widow? And
yet I will not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon."

"Ask it, ask it, fair lady," says the gentleman laughing; "but make
haste, for I am eager to embrace you. How beautiful you have grown!"

She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what she said. Before
going up to the castle the worthy lord dismounts by the village
church, and goes in. Under the porch, at the head of the chief people,
he beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers a low salute.
With matchless pride she bears high over the men's heads the towering
horned bonnet (_hennin_[33]) of the period; the triumphal cap of the
Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns wherewith it
was embellished. The real lady, blushing at her eclipse, went out
looking very small. Anon she muttered, angrily, "There goes your serf.
It is all over: everything has changed places: the ass insults the
horse."

[33] The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and
often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth
century.--TRANS.

As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the lady's, draws from
his girdle a well-sharpened dagger, and with a single turn cleverly
cuts the fine robe along her loins.[34] The crowd was astonished, but
began to make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron's household
going off in pursuit of her. Swift and merciless about her whistled
and fell the strokes of the whip. She flies, but slowly, being already
grown somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces when she
stumbles; her best friend having put a stone in her way to trip her
up. Amidst roars of laughter she sprawls yelling on the ground. But
the ruthless pages flog her up again. The noble handsome greyhounds
help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest places. At last, in
sad disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her
house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying,
"Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!" There hung she, like
the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and
still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.
Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he
dread the crowd, lest they should sack his house?

[34] Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By