Karvel is about thirty-six years of age. His admirable face is rendered all the more remarkable by the expression of a high degree of intelligence and of inexhaustible kindness. A long robe of black cloth opening wide at his neck exposes the folds of his shirt that is fastened with silver buttons. His wife Morise is thirty. Her blonde hair, braided in plaits, crowns her lovely face, on which, thanks to a happy mixture, playfulness is combined with gentleness and firmness.
Morise interrupts her labors, remains thoughtful for a moment and, contemplating one of the copper vases which is rather more rounded than the rest, smiles and says to her husband:
"That copper vase reminds me of the capers of poor Mylio, your brother. He loved to put the basin over his head as a casque to make me laugh."
Karvel (smiling sadly)—"But you, in turn, used to compel the giddy-headed boy to taste our bitterest decoctions. Good, dear, Mylio! If only our friend the Lombard merchant succeeded in meeting him in Touraine!"
Morise—"Our friend surely found him easily. All he had to do would be to inquire after the celebrated Mylio the Trouvere. Your brother's name is so well known that its fame reached as far as here. Was it not only day before yesterday that Aimery was reciting to us some of Mylio's songs translated into the language of this region?"
Karvel (smiling again)—"Giraude did not altogether share the enthusiasm of her brother Aimery for those licentious verses, and not that she affects prudery. I have never seen such lofty virtue joined to so much intelligence. Never—except—in yourself!"
Morise—"Fie, flatterer! The idea of comparing me with the Lady of Lavaur! That charming and virtuous woman, who, left a widow at twenty, and although as beautiful as day, and Countess of Lavaur besides, and having only to choose among the wealthiest seigneurs of Languedoc, still preferred to remain single in order to devote her attention wholly to the education of her son Aloys!"
Karvel—"Oh! Say all imaginable good things you please about our friend Giraude, you will still fall short of the full truth—Noble woman! How angelic is her heart! How inexhaustible her charity! Oh, the saying does not lie—'Never does a poor body knock at her door without leaving happy.'"
Morise—"It is she herself who supervises the school that she founded for little children in order to combat the ignorance and misery that breed all manner of vices. Boys and girls find there an asylum."
Karvel—"And what a high degree of courage did she not display during last year's great epidemic when the sick had to be tended! Noble and saintly woman!"