treasure, my master, my little one; some even dared most
heretically to say, my god! If you don't believe it, ask your friends.

At this moment the lady let him understand by a gesture that the king
was there.

"Can he hear?" said the queen.

"Yes."

"Can he see?"

"Yes."

"Who brought him?"

"Pezare."

"Fetch the physician, and get Gauttier into his own room." said the
queen.

In less time than it takes a beggar to say "God bless you, sir!" the
queen had swathed the lantern in linen and paint, so that you would
have thought it a hideous wound in a state of grievous inflammation.
When the king, enraged by what he overheard, burst open the door, he
found the queen lying on the bed exactly as he has seen her through
the hole, and the physician, examining the lantern swathed in
bandages, and saying, "How it is the little treasure, this morning?"
in exactly the same voice as the king had heard. A jocular and
cheerful expression, because physicians and surgeons use cheerful
words with ladies and treat this sweet flower with flowery phrases.
This sight made the king look as foolish as a fox caught in a trap.
The queen sprang up, reddening with shame, and asking what man dared
to intrude upon her privacy at such a moment, but perceiving the king,
she said to him as follows:--

"Ah! my lord, you have discovered that which I have endeavoured to
conceal from you: that I am so badly treated by you that I am
afflicted with a burning ailment, of which my dignity would not allow
me to complain, but which needs secret dressing in order to assuage
the influence of the vital forces. To save my honour and your own, I
am compelled to come to my good Lady Miraflor, who consoles me in my
troubles."

Then the physician commenced to treat Leufroid to an oration,
interlarded with Latin quotations and precious grains from
Hippocrates, Galen, the School of Salerno, and others, in which he
showed him how necessary to women was the proper cultivation of the
field of Venus, and that there was great danger of death to queens of
Spanish temperament, whose blood was excessively amorous. He delivered
himself of his arguments with great solemnity of feature, voice, and
manner, in order to give the Sire de Montsoreau time to get to bed.
Then the queen took the same text to preach the king a sermon as long
as his arm, and requested the loan of that limb, that the king might
conduct her to her apartment instead of the poor invalid, who us