“Another accident has occurred at the château,” he said, “but, my dear Seigneur, pray do not trouble yourself on account of it. When your wife was returning from a feast in the night your favourite horse fell and broke two of his legs, and had to be destroyed.”
The Seigneur replied that he was grieved to hear of the circumstance, and that in order to avoid further mischances of the sort it would be better that his wife should frequent no more feasts.
A third time the perfidious Clerk sought the lady. On this occasion he threatened her with death if she would not be his, but she replied in the most spirited manner that she loved death a thousand times better than him. At these words he could not contain his rage, and, drawing his dagger, thrust fiercely at her head. But the lady’s guardian angel turned the stroke 193 and the weapon struck harmlessly against the wall. She fled from the room, closing the door behind her as she went; whereupon the Clerk rushed downstairs to the nursery where her child was quietly sleeping in its cradle, and, seeing no one beside it, stabbed the slumbering infant to the heart.
Then he wrote to the Seigneur: “Hasten your return, I beg of you, for it is necessary that you should be here to establish order. Your dog and your white courser have perished, but that is not the worst. Your little son, alas! is also dead. The great sow devoured him when your wife was at a ball with the miller for a gallant.”
When the Seigneur received this letter he returned at once from the wars, his anger rising higher and higher with every homeward league. When he arrived at the château he struck three times upon the door with his hand, and his summons was answered by the Clerk.
“How now, evil Clerk,” shouted the infuriated Count, “did I not leave my wife in your care?” and with these words he thrust his lance into the Clerk’s open mouth, so that the point stood out at the nape of his neck. Then, mounting the stairs, he entered his wife’s chamber, and without speaking a word stabbed her with his sword.
The ballad then goes on to speak of the burial of the victims of the wicked Clerk. The lady, dressed all in white, was laid in her tomb by the light of the moon and the stars. On her breast lay her little son, on her right the favourite greyhound, and on her left the white courser, and it is said that in her grave she first caresses one and then the other, and the infant, as if jealous, nestles closer to his mother’s heart.
The Lady of La Garaye
The château of La Garaye, near Dinan, is rendered famous by the virtues and boundless charity of its Count, Claude Toussaint Marot de La Garaye, and his wife. Their interesting story is told in the charming poem of Mrs Norton, The Lady of La Garaye: