However, after considering both her figure, which was just such a one as his hands had known, and her features, which he recognised in the same way, he perceived that it was indeed none other than herself.  And he was well pleased to think that a woman who had never been reputed to have a lover, and who had refused so many worthy gentlemen, should have chosen himself alone.

But Love, which is ever changeful of mood, could not suffer him to live long in such repose, but, filling him with self-conceit and hope, led him to make known his love, in the expectation that she would then hold him still more dear.

One day, when the Princess was in the garden, the lady Jambicque went to walk in a pathway by herself.  The gentleman, seeing that she was alone, went up to converse with her, and, as though he had never elsewhere met her, spoke as follows—­

“Mistress, I have long borne towards you in my heart an affection which, through dread of displeasing you, I have never ventured to reveal.  But now my pain has come to be such that I can no longer endure it and live, for I think that no man could ever have loved you as I do.”

The Lady Jambicque would not allow him to finish his discourse, but said to him in great wrath—­

“Did you ever hear or see that I had sweetheart or lover?  I trow not, and am indeed astonished to find you bold enough to address such words to a virtuous woman like me.  You have lived in the same house long enough to know that I shall never love other than my husband; beware, then, of speaking further after this fashion.”

At this hypocrisy the gentleman could not refrain from laughing and saying to her—­

“You are not always so stern, madam, as you are now.  What boots it to use such concealment towards me?  Is it not better to have a perfect than an imperfect love?”

“I have no love for you,” replied Jambicque, “whether perfect or imperfect, except such as I bear to the rest of my mistress’s servants.  But if you speak further to me as you have spoken now, I shall perhaps have such hatred for you as may be to your hurt.”

However, the gentleman persisted in his discourse.

“Where,” said he, “is the kindness that you show me when I cannot see you?  Why do you withhold it from me now when the light suffers me to behold both your beauty and your excellent and perfect grace?”

Jambicque, making a great sign of the cross, replied—­

“Either you have lost your understanding or you are the greatest liar alive.  Never in my life have I to my knowledge shown you more kindness or less than I do at this moment, and I pray you therefore tell me what it is you mean.”

Then the unhappy gentleman, thinking to better his fortune with her, told her of the place where he had met her, and of the chalk-mark which he had made in order to recognise her, on hearing which she was so beside herself with anger as to tell him that he was the wickedest of men, and that she would bring him to repent of the foul falsehood that he had invented against her.