MARCH 2, 1414
"Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg?"
_In the chapel at Puysange you may still see the tomb of Adhelmar; but Mélite's bones lie otherwhere. "Her heart was changeable," as old Nicolas says, justly enough; and so in due time it was comforted.
For Hugues d'Arques—or Hugh Darke, as his name was Anglicized—presently stood high in the favor of King Edward. A fief was granted to Messire Darke, in Norfolk, where Hugues shortly built for himself a residence at Yaxham, and began to look about for a wife: it was not long before he found one.
This befell at Brétigny when, in 1360, the Great Peace was signed between France and England, and Hugues, as one of the English embassy, came face to face with Reinault and Mélite. History does not detail the meeting; but, inasmuch as the Sieur d'Arques and Mélite de Puysange were married at Rouen the following October, doubtless it passed off pleasantly enough.
The couple had sufficient in common to have qualified them for several decades of mutual toleration. But by ill luck, Mélite died in child-birth three years after her marriage. She had borne, in 1361, twin daughters, of whom Adelais died a spinster; the other daughter, Sylvia, circa 1378, figured in an unfortunate love-affair with one of Sir Thomas Mowbray's attendants, but subsequently married Robert Vernon of Winstead. Mélite left also a son, Hugh, born in 1363, who succeeded to his father's estate of Yaxham in 1387, in which year Hugues fell at the battle of Radcot Bridge, fighting in behalf of the ill-fated Richard of Bordeaux.
Now we turn to certain happenings in Eastcheap, at the Boar's Head
Tavern._
CHAPTER III
The Episode Called Love-Letters of Falstaff
I. "That Gray Iniquity"