who was only accustomed to a litter.  One of her pages followed her, well armed.  She was evidently some light o’love belonging to a noble of high rank or a lady of the court, since she held her dress high off the ground, and bent her back like a woman of quality.  Lady or courtesan she pleased Jacques de Beaune, who, far from turning up his nose at her, conceived the wild idea of attaching himself to her for life.  With this in view he determined to follow her in order to ascertain whither she would lead him—­to Paradise or to the limbo of hell—­to a gibbet or to an abode of love.  Anything was a glean of hope to him in the depth of his misery.  The lady strolled along the bank of the Loire towards Plessis inhaling like a fish the fine freshness of the water, toying, sauntering like a little mouse who wishes to see and taste everything.  When the page perceived that Jacques de Beaune persistently followed his mistress in all her movements, stopped when she stopped, and watched her trifling in a bare-faced fashion, as if he had a right so to do, he turned briskly round with a savage and threatening face, like that of a dog whose says, “Stand back, sir!” But the good Tourainian had his wits about him.  Believing that if a cat may look at king, he, a baptised Christian, might certainly look at a pretty woman, he stepped forward, and feigning to grin at the page, he strutted now behind and now before the lady.  She said nothing, but looked at the sky, which was putting on its nightcap, the stars, and everything which could give her pleasure.  So things went on.  At last, arrived outside Portillon, she stood still, and in order to see better, cast her veil back over her shoulder, and in so doing cast upon the youth the glance of a clever woman who looks round to see if there is any danger of being robbed.  I may tell you that Jacques de Beaune was a thorough ladies’ man, could walk by the side of a princess without disgracing her, had a brave and resolute air which please the sex, and if he was a little browned by the sun from being so much in the open air, his skin would look white enough under the canopy of a bed.  The glance, keen as a needle, which the lady threw him, appeared to him more animated than that with which she would have honoured her prayer-book.  Upon it he built the hope of a windfall of love, and resolved to push the adventure to the very edge of the petticoat, risking to go still further, not only his lips, which he held of little count, but his two ears and something else besides.  He followed into the town the lady, who returned by the Rue des Trois-Pucelles, and led the gallant through a labyrinth of little streets, to the square in which is at the present time situated the Hotel de la Crouzille.  There she stopped at the door of a splendid mansion, at which the page knocked.  A servant opened it, and the lady went in and closed the door, leaving the Sieur de Beaune open-mouthed, stupefied, and as foolish as Monseigneur St. Denis when he was trying to pick up his head.