"And nunneries?" asked Jean Charost.
"Somewhat better," she answered, with a sigh. "Whatever faults women may have, they are not such coarse ones as we have seen here to-night; but I know not much about them, for I have been long enough in one only to judge of it rightly; and now I feel like a bird with its prison doors unclosed, because I am going to join the court of the Queen of Anjou: that does not speak ill of the nunnery, methinks. Who knows, if they reveled as loud and high there as here, but I might have loved to remain."
"I think not," answered her young companion, "if I may judge by your face at dinner. You seemed not to smile on the revels of the monks."
"They made my head ache," answered the girl; and then added, abruptly, "so you are an observer of faces, are you? What think you of that face speaking with the abbot?"
"Nay, he may be your father, brother, or any near relation," answered Jean Charost. "I shall not speak till I know more."
"Oh, he is nothing to me," replied the girl. "He is my noble Lord of Giac, who does me the great honor, with my lady, his wife, of conveying me to Beaugency, where we shall overtake the Queen of Anjou. His face would not curdle milk, nor turn wine sour; but yet there is something in it not of honey exactly."
"He seems to leave all the honey to his fair lady," replied Jean Charost.
"Yes, to catch flies with," replied the girl; and then she added, in a lower tone, "and he is the spider to eat them."
The wine and the preserved fruits had by this time been placed upon a large marble table in the centre of the hall; and a fair sight they made, with the silver flagons, and the gold and jeweled cups, spread out upon that white expanse, beneath the gray and fretted arches overhead, while on the several groups around in their gay apparel, and the abbot in his robes, standing by the table, with a serving brother at his side, the many-colored light shone strongly through the window of painted glass.
"Here's to you, noble sir, whom I am to call Louis Valois, and to your young friend, Jean Charost," said the abbot, bowing to the duke, and raising a cup he had just filled. "I pray you do me justice in this excellent wine of Nuits."