f at the last to owe yet
six livres two sous to the account of his creditor, which account was
approved correct by the judges, for Jacquet Coquedouille was a sound
arithmetician. This was the reason why the scrivenry of Florent
Guillaume, under the choir buttresses of _The Annunciation_, was sold,
on Saturday the fifth day of March, being the Feast of St. Theophilus,
to the profit of Maitre Jacquet Coquedouille. Since that time the poor
penman had never a place to call his own. But by the good help of Jean
Magne the bell-ringer and with the protection of Our Lady, whose Hours
he had aforetime written, Florent Guillaume found a perch o' nights in
the steeple of the Cathedral.

The scrivener and the lace-maker had much ado to live. Marguerite only
kept body and soul together by chance and charity, for she had long lost
her good looks and she hated the lace-making. They helped each other.
Folks said so by way of reproach; they had been better advised to
account it to them for righteousness. Florent Guillaume was a learned
clerk. Well knowing every word of the history of the beautiful Black
Virgin of Le Puy and the ordering of the ceremonies of the great
_pardon_, he had conceived the notion he might serve as guide to the
pilgrims, deeming he would surely light on someone compassionate enough
to pay him a supper in guerdon of his fine stories. But the first folk
he had offered his services to had bidden him begone because his ragged
coat bespoke neither good guidance nor clerkly wit; so he had come back,
downhearted and crestfallen, to the Bishop's wall, where he had his
bit of sunshine and his kind gossip Marguerite. "They reckon," he said
bitterly, "I am not learned enough to number them the relics and recount
the miracles of Our Lady. Do they think my wits have escaped away
through the holes in my gaberdine?"

"'Tis not the wits," replied Marguerite, "escape by the holes in a
body's clothes, but the good natural heat. I am sore a-cold. And it
is but too true that, man and woman, they judge us by our dress. The
gallants would find me comely enough yet if I was accoutred like my Lady
the Comtesse de Clermont."

Meanwhile, all the length of the street in front of them the pilgrims
were elbowing and fighting their way to the Sanctuary, where they were
to win pardon for their sins.

"They will surely suffocate anon," said Marguerite. "Twenty-two years
agone, on the Grand Friday, two hundred persons died stifled under the