She was asked in marriage by many of good estate, but her brother would never listen to them through dread of losing her, and also because he loved his money too well.  She therefore spent a great part of her life un-wedded, living very virtuously in her brother’s house.  Now there was a young and handsome gentleman who had been reared from childhood in this same house, and who, growing in comeliness and virtue as well as in years, had come to have a complete and peaceful rule over his master, in such sort that whenever the latter desired to give any charge to his sister he always did so by means of this young gentleman, (3) and he allowed him so much influence and intimacy, sending him morning and evening to his sister, that at last a great love sprang up between the two.

3 This is possibly a Count of Keradreux, whom John II. is known to have put to death, though the Breton and French chroniclers do not relate the circumstances of the crime.—­ See_post_, p. 100, note 4.—­Ed.

But as the gentleman feared for his life if he should offend his master, and the lady feared also for her honour, their love found gladness in speech alone, until the Lord of Jossebelin had often said to his sister that he wished the gentleman were rich and of as good a house as her own, for he had never known a man whom he would so gladly have had for his brother-in-law.

He repeated these sayings so often that, after debating them together, the lovers concluded that if they wedded one another they would readily be forgiven.  Love, which easily believes what it desires, persuaded them that nothing but good could come of it; and in this hope they celebrated and consummated the marriage without the knowledge of any save a priest and certain women.

After they had lived for a few years in the delight that man and woman can have together in marriage, and as one of the handsomest and most loving couples in Christendom, Fate, vexed to find two persons so much at their ease, would no longer suffer them to continue in it, but stirred up against them an enemy, who, keeping watch upon the lady, came to a knowledge of her great happiness, and, ignorant the while of her marriage, went and told the Lord of Jossebelin that the gentleman in whom he had so much trust, went too often to his sister’s room, and that moreover at hours when no man should enter it.  This the Count would not at first believe for the trust that he had in his sister and in the gentleman.

But the other, like one careful for the honour of the house, repeated the charge so often that a strict watch was set, and the poor folk, who suspected nothing, were surprised.  For one evening the Lord of Jossebelin was advised that the gentleman was with his sister, and, hastening thither, found the poor love-blinded pair lying in bed together.  His anger at the sight robbed him of speech, and, drawing his sword, he ran after the gentleman to kill him.  But the other, being nimble of body, fled in nothing but his shirt, and, being unable to escape by the door, leaped through a window into the garden.