s, retired
to his chamber, undressed, and went to bed. Madame, dressed only in
a petticoat, put on her night-dress, took her prayer-book, and
began,--devoutly enough God knows--to say her psalms and paternosters,
but monseigneur, who was as wide awake as a rat, was anxious for a
little conversation, and wished madame to put off saying her prayers
till the morrow, and talk to him.

"Pardon me," she replied, "but I cannot talk to you now--God comes first
you know. Nothing would go right in the house all the week if I did not
give God what little praise I can, and I should expect bad luck if I did
not say my prayers now."

"You sicken me with all this bigotry," said monseigneur. "What is
the use of saying all these prayers? Come on, come on! and leave
that business to the priests. Am I not right, Jehannette?" he added,
addressing the damsel before mentioned.

"Monseigneur," she replied, "I do not know what to say, except that as
madame is accustomed to serve God, let her do so."

"There, there!" said madame to her husband, "I see well that you want
to argue, and I wish to finish my prayers, so we shall not agree. I will
leave Jehannette to talk to you, and will go to my little chamber behind
to petition God."

Monseigneur was satisfied, and madame went off at full gallop to her
friend, the knight, who received her with God knows how great joy, and
the honour that he did her was to bend her knees and lay her down.

But you must know that whilst madame was saying her prayers with her
lover, it happened, I know not how, that her husband begged Jehannette,
who was keeping him company, to grant him her favours.

To cut matters short, by his promises and fine words she was induced to
obey him, but the worst of it was that madame, when she returned from
seeing her lover, who had tumbled her twice before she left, found her
husband and Jehannette, her waiting-woman, engaged in the very same work
which she had been performing, at which she was much astonished; and
still more so were her husband and Jehannette at being thus surprised.

When madame saw that, God knows how she saluted them, though she would
have done better to hold her tongue; and she vented her rage so on poor
Jehannette that it seemed as though she must have a devil in her belly,
or she could not have used such abominable words.

Indeed she did more and worse, for she picked up a big stick and laid
it across the girl's shoulders, on seeing which, monseigne