“You did not find him so entertaining as you had expected, then?”
“Yes, I did. To be honest, I found him, when I could forget my anxiety, very entertaining indeed—on his own ground.”
“What is his own ground?”
“Provence, Felix—the Provence of story and poetry. He seems to know everything about it—its history, its legends, its places and people. And he has a really picturesque way of putting things. He told me quite a number of tales—one, very pretty, about a couple called Briande and Bérard.”
“What about them?”
“O! It was quite a simple little story. Really all its charm lay in his wording of it; and I could not reproduce that.”
“Try.”
“I will try to tell the story if you like; but it must be in my own way. It was about a beautiful lady who lived in Aigues-Mortes in the time of the holy King Louis. She was so beautiful that her fame spread far around, bringing innumerable suitors, great lords and warriors among them, to her feet. But she was cold and haughty; and not one of them all was successful in touching her heart. She would never deign to barter that, she said, against rank and power, though it were the Count of Dauphiny himself who should come to woo her; but she would yield it to his meanest henchman did he please her. Briande was her name; and she was called Briande Sans-fleur, for the strange reason that never a flower was to be seen upon her or in her chambers. She hated to have them plucked, and the surest way to her antipathy was for one to woo her with a posy. They thought that sinister and unwomanly; but so great was the force of her loveliness, there was not a gallant among them but would have pledged his soul to her, though she had been proved a witch.
“Well, it happened once that that saying of hers, whether true or false, reached the ears of the Count of Dauphiny, a hard man and a proud; and he laughed, and swore to himself, ‘It was designed for a challenge, and that I should hear it. I will woo her, then, but in such disguise that only she shall penetrate its secret. We shall see then, if, knowing what she knows, she will reject the Count of Dauphiny. And after? Ah, low shall lie the head of this Briande Sans-fleur!’
“So he caused it privately to be whispered in the ears of Briande—by one who, in seeming, betrayed a jealous confidence—that the Count of Dauphiny, stung by her professed disdain, designed to visit her in the guise of a wandering minstrel of humble birth, thus to woo and win her by virtue of his sole sweet persuasion, while she, unguessing the truth, should fall a captive to that dear deception.