With these words she rose up and returned home.

The gentleman’s anger at these words may well be imagined by such as have experienced the like fortune.  But having no lack of spirit, he held it better to have received this unfavourable reply than to have failed in declaring his love, to which he held fast during three years, losing neither time nor opportunity in wooing her by letters and in other ways.

For three years, however, she vouchsafed him no reply, but shunned him as the wolf shuns the hound that is to take him; and this she did through fear for her honour and fair fame, and not because she hated him.  He perceived this so clearly that he pursued her more eagerly than ever; and at last, after many refusals, troubles, tortures and despairs, the lady took pity upon him for the greatness and steadfastness of his love, and so granted him what he had so greatly desired and so long awaited.

When they had agreed concerning the means to be employed, the French gentleman failed not to repair to her house, although in doing so he placed his life in great danger, seeing that she and her relations lived all together.

However, being as skilful as he was handsome, he contrived the matter so prudently that he was able to enter the lady’s room at the hour which she had appointed, and found her there all alone, lying in a beautiful bed; but as he was hasting to put off his clothes in order to join her, he heard a great whispering at the door, and a noise of swords scraping against the wall.

Then the widow said to him, with the face of one nigh to death—­

“Now is your life and my honour in as great danger as well can be, for I hear my brothers outside seeking you to slay you.  I pray you, therefore, hide yourself under this bed, and when they fail to find you I shall have reason to be angry with them for alarming me without just cause.”

The gentleman, who had never yet known fear, replied—­

“And what, pray, are your brothers that they should frighten a man of mettle?  If the whole breed of them were there together, I am sure they would not tarry for the fourth thrust of my sword.  Do you, therefore, rest quietly in bed, and leave the guarding of this door to me.”

Then he wrapped his cloak about his arm, took his drawn sword in his hand, and opened the door so that he might have a closer view of the swords that he had heard.  When the door was opened, he saw two serving-women, who, holding a sword in each hand, had raised this alarm.

“Sir,” they said to him, “forgive us.  We were commanded by our mistress to act in this manner, but you shall be hindered by us no more.”

Seeing that they were women, the gentleman could do no more than bid them go to the devil, and shut the door in their faces.  Then he got into bed to the lady with all imaginable speed, his passion for her being in no wise diminished by fear; and forgetting to inquire the reason of this skirmish, he thought only of satisfying his desire.