e, to
spend Michaelmas in Paris: and then was enough noise and merriment.
First, mass in our Lady Church, whereto both Dame Isabel and I waited on
the Queen; and by the same token, she was donned of one of the fairest
robes that ever she bare, which was of velvet blue of Malyns [Malines],
broidered with apple-blossom and with diapering of gold. It did not
become her, by reason of her dark complexion, so well as it should have
done S--

"Hold! Man spelleth not Cicely with an S."

"Jack, if thou start me like this any more, then will I turn the key in
the lock when I sit down to write," cried I, for verily mine heart was
going pitter-patter to come up in my throat, and out at my mouth, for
aught I know. "Thou irksome man, I went about to write `some folks,'
not `Cicely.'"

"But wherefore?" saith Jack, looking innocent as a year-old babe. "When
it meaneth Cicely, then would I put Cicely."

"But I meant _not_ Cicely, man o' life, bless thee!"

"I thank thee for thy blessing, Sissot; and I will fain hope thou didst
mean that any way. I will go bail thy pen meant not Cicely, good wife;
but if it were not in thine heart that Sissot's fair hair, and rose-red
complexion, and grey eyes, should have gone better with that blue velvet
gown than Queen Isabel's dusky hair and brown eyes, then do I know
little of man or woman. And I dare be bound it would, belike."

And Jack lifteth his hat to me right courteously, and is gone afore I
well know whether to laugh or to be angered. So I ween I had better
laugh.

Where was I, trow? Oh, at mass in our Lady Church of Paris, where that
day was a miracle done on two that were possessed of the Devil, whose
names were Geoffrey Boder and Jeanne La Petite; and the girdle of Saint
Mary being shown on the high altar, they were allowed to touch the same,
whereon they were healed straightway. And the Queen, with her own
hands, gave them alms, a crown; and her oblation to the image of Saint
Mary in the said church, being a festival, was a crown (her daily
oblation being seven-pence the day); and to the said holy girdle a
crown, and to the holy relics, yet another. Then came we home by the
water of Seyne, for which the boatman had twelve pence. [Note 5.]

We dwelt after this full peacefully at Paris for divers weeks, saving
that we made short journeys to towns in the neighbourhood; as, one day
to the house of the Sisters Predicants of Poissy, and another to God's
House of Loure [Not