n to any he had learned from his tutor.
He began to look at and desire such things as he deemed beautiful, and
among others a maiden who slept in his mother's room. No one had
any suspicion of this, for he was looked upon as a mere child, and,
moreover, in that household nothing save godly talk was ever heard.

This young gallant, however, began secretly soliciting the girl, who
complained of it to her mistress. The latter had so much love for her
son and so high an opinion of him, that she thought the girl spoke as
she did in order to make her hate him; but, being strongly urged by the
other, she at last said--

"I shall find out whether it is true, and will punish him if it be
as you say. But if, on the other hand, you are bringing an untruthful
accusation against him, you shall suffer for it."

Then, in order to test the matter, she bade the girl make an appointment
with her son that he might come and lie with her at midnight, in the bed
in which she slept alone, beside the door of his mother's room.

The maid obeyed her mistress, who, when night came, took the girl's
place, resolved, if the story were true, to punish her son so severely
that he would never again lie with a woman without remembering it.

While she was thinking thus wrathfully, her son came and got into the
bed, but although she beheld him do so, she could not yet believe that
he meditated any unworthy deed. She therefore refrained from speaking
to him until he had given her some token of his evil intent, for no
trifling matters could persuade her that his desire was actually a
criminal one. Her patience, however, was tried so long, and her nature
proved so frail that, forgetting her motherhood, her anger became
transformed into an abominable delight. And just as water that has been
restrained by force rushes onward with the greater vehemence when it is
released, so was it with this unhappy lady who had so prided herself on
the constraint she had put upon her body. After taking the first step
downwards to dishonour, she suddenly found herself at the bottom, and
thus that night she became pregnant by him whom she had thought to
restrain from acting in similar fashion towards another.

No sooner was the sin accomplished than such remorse of conscience began
to torment her as filled the whole of her after-life with repentance.
And so keen was it at the first, that she rose from beside her son--who
still thought that she was the maid--and entered a c