He thought and thought very hard for a little while, and then suddenly he said to Pierrot:
“Pierrot, dost thou still remember the Latin tongue that good Father Ambrose taught thee last winter in our castle in Poitiers?”
The little page assured his lord that he did, for he was really a clever scholar in the Latin tongue, which both his master and the Count William understood but indifferently.
Then Count Reynaurd called him close to his side, and whispered a plan to him that seemed to please them both mightily. Pierrot at once took the goose-quill pen that Reynaurd handed him, and after screwing up his face and working very carefully, he wrote these lines:
Hoc carmen non composui,
Quod cano, quod cano!
and this he took great pains to teach his master.
The next day Count Reynaurd sang his song over again and again, and Pierrot purposely left the door ajar. Count William noticed that after every stanza there were two new lines added in another tongue:
Hoc carmen non composui,
Quod cano, quod cano!
At first this puzzled Count William very much indeed.
“Faugh!” he said to himself at length, “that ridiculous Reynaurd is seeking to give a learned air to his poetry! I dare say he has picked up those lines out of some old manuscript, and thinks to pass himself off for a great scholar.”