f his jacket.

"Never go that way, messire! not that way. You might meet Jacquet
Coquedouille, and you would be all in an instant turned into stone.
Better encounter the basilisk than Jacquet Coquedouille. I will tell you
what you must do if, like the wise and prudent man your face proclaims
you to be, you would live long and make your peace with God. Hearken
to me; I am a scholar, a Bachelor. To-day the holy relics will be borne
through the streets and crossways of the city. You will find great
solace in touching the carven shrines which enclose the cornelian cup
wherefrom the child Jesus drank, one of the wine-jars of the Marriage at
Cana, the cloth of the Last Supper, and the holy foreskin. If you take
my advice, we will go wait for them, under cover, at a cookshop I wot
of, before which they will pass without fail."

Then, in a wheedling voice, without loosing his hold of the pilgrim's
jacket, he pointed to the lace-maker and said:

"Messire, you must give six sous to yonder worthy woman, that she may go
buy us wine, for she knows where good liquor is to be gotten."

The Limousin gentleman, who was a simple soul after all, went where he
was led, and Florent Guillaume supped on the leg and wing of a goose,
the bones whereof he put in his pocket as a present for Madame Ysabeau,
his fellow lodger in the timbers of the steeple,--to wit, Jean Magne the
bell-ringer's magpie.

He found her that night perched on the beam where she was used to roost,
beside the hole in the wall which was her storeroom wherein she hoarded
walnuts and hazel-nuts, almonds and beech-nuts. She had awoke at the
noise of his coming and flapped her wings; so he greeted her very
courteously, addressing her in these obliging terms:

"Magpie most pious, lady recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the
Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the lustrous coat, all
hail!"

Then offering her the goose bones nicely folded in a cabbage leaf:

"Lady," he said, "I bring you here the scraps remaining of a good dinner
a gentleman from Limoges gave me. His countrymen are radish eaters; but
I have taught this one to prefer an Anis goose to all the radishes in
the Limousin."

Next day and the rest of the week Florent Guillaume,--for he could never
light on his fat friend again nor yet any other good pilgrim with a
well-lined travelling wallet,--fasted _a solis ortu usque ad occasum_,
from rising sun to dewy eve. Marguerite the lace-maker did likew