was her shining hair,
And her eyebrow pencilled rare,
Face fine-curved and colour fair:
Never saw you lovelier.
Gazed she o'er the garden-ground,
Saw the opening roses round,
Heard the birds sing merrily;
Then she made her orphan cry:

"Woe's me! what a wretch am I!
Caged and captive, why, ah why?
Aucassin, young lord, prithee,
Your sweetheart, am I not she?
Ay, methinks you hate not me.
For your sake I'm prisoner,
In this vaulted bed-chamber,
Where my life's a weary one.
But by God, sweet Mary's son,
Long herein I will not stay,
Can I find way!"

_Here they speak and tell the story_.

Nicolette was in prison, as you have harkened and heard, in the chamber.
The cry and the noise ran through all the land and through all the
country that Nicolette was lost. There are some say she is fled abroad
out of the land. Other some that Warren, Count of Beaucaire, has had her
done to death. Rejoice who might, Aucassin was not well pleased. But he
went straightway to the Viscount of the place, and thus addressed him:

"Sir Viscount, what have you done with Nicolette, my very sweet friend,
the thing that I love best in all the world? Have you stolen and taken
her from me? Rest assured that if I die of this thing, my blood will be
required of you; and very justly, when you have gone and killed me with
your two hands. For you have stolen from me the thing that I love best
in all the world."

"Fair sir," said the Viscount, "now let be! Nicolette is a slave-girl
whom I fetched from a foreign land and bought for money of the heathen. I
held her at the font, and christened her and stood godfather to her, and
have brought her up. One of these days I would have given her a young
fellow to win bread for her in wedlock. What is this to you? Take you
some king's daughter or some count's. Moreover, what were you profited,
think you, had you made her your concubine, or taken her to live with
you? Mighty little had you got by that, seeing that your soul would be
in Hell for ever and ever, for to Paradise you would never win!"

"Paradise? What have I to do there? I seek not to win Paradise, so I
have Nicolette my sweet friend whom I love so well. For none go to
Paradise but I'll tell you who. Your old priests and your old cripples,
and the halt and maimed, who are down on their knees day and night,
before altars and in old crypts; these also that wear mangy old cloaks,
or go in rags and tatters, shivering and sho