Jeanne was inconsolable. For days she wandered about the château carrying her baby boy in her arms and sobbing. All the domestic circle seemed disturbed at the Seigneur’s departure except the Clerk of Rohan, 191 to whom Count Matthew had so trustingly confided the charge of his affairs.
The Seigneur had declared that he would return within a year’s time. A year passed, however, and no news of him had been received. Now the Clerk was a perfidious and wicked schemer, and one morning as he and Jeanne were in conversation he hinted that the year within which the Seigneur had promised to return was now gone by and that the war in which he had been engaged had come to an end. He made no secret of his passion for the lady, but she on her part turned upon him angrily, saying: “Is it the fashion nowadays for women to consider themselves widows, knowing well that their husbands are alive? Go to, miserable Clerk, thy heart is full of wickedness. If my husband were here he would break thee in little pieces!”
When the Clerk heard this he went secretly to the kennels, and there he slew the Seigneur’s favourite greyhound. Taking some of its blood, he wrote with it a letter to Count Matthew telling him that his wife was most unhappy because of an accident which had occurred; that she had been hunting the deer, and that in the chase his favourite greyhound had died from over-exertion. The Seigneur duly received the letter, and in his reply told the Clerk to comfort the lady, as he was quite able to replace the hound. At the same time he desired that hunting should cease for the present, as the huntsmen seemed unskilful in their conduct of the chase.
The wicked Clerk once more sought the lady.
“Alas!” said he, “you are losing your beauty by weeping night and day.”
“I will know how to recover my beauty when my husband returns,” she replied coldly.
“Do not cheat yourself,” he said. “Surely you can see by this time that he is either dead or has taken another wife. In the East there are many beautiful girls who are far wealthier than you.”
“If he has taken another wife,” said the lady, “I shall die; and if he be dead I ask for naught but death. Leave me, miserable wretch. Thy tongue is poisoned with deceit.”
When the Clerk had sufficiently recovered from this second rebuff, he betook himself to the stables, where the Seigneur’s horse, the most beautiful in the country, stood champing in its stall. The wretch, drawing his poignard, thrust it into the noble steed’s entrails, and, as he had done in the case of the greyhound, took some of the blood and wrote once more to the Count.