“A fig for your gold ring,” cried the malignant hag. “Bon gré, mal gré, you shall marry Job the Witless, the stable boy.”
“Marry Job! Oh, horror! I should die of grief! Alas, my mother, were you but here now to protect me!”
“If you must howl, pray do so in the courtyard. You may make as many grimaces as you please, but in three days you shall be married for all that.”
The old gravedigger slowly patrolled the road, his bell in his hand, carrying the news of those who had died from village to village. In his doleful whine he 170 cried: “Pray for the soul of a noble cavalier, a worthy gentleman of a good heart, who was mortally wounded in the side by the stroke of a sword in the battle near Nantes. He is to be buried to-day in the White Church.”
At the marriage feast the bride was all in tears. All the guests, young and old, wept with her, all except her stepmother. She was conducted to the place of honour at supper-time, but she only drank a sip of water and ate a morsel of bread. By and by the dancing commenced, but when it was proposed that the bride should join in the revels she was not to be found; she had, indeed, escaped from the house, her hair flying in disorder, and where she had gone no one knew.
All the lights were out at the manor, every one slept profoundly. The poor young woman alone lay concealed in the garden in the throes of a fever. She heard a footstep close by. “Who is there?” she asked fearfully.
“It is I, Nola, your foster-brother.”
“Ah, is it you? You are truly welcome, my dear brother,” cried Gwennolaïk, rising in rapture.
“Come with me,” he whispered, and swinging her on to the crupper of his white horse he plunged madly into the night.