“Fear not,” quoth Pierre. “I am about to sew it on again.”
When the maidenhead had been resewed, the girl, who was acquiring a taste for this form of embroidery, said to Pierre:
“‘Tis not sewn sufficiently firm.”
“Indeed it is.”
“‘Tis not.”
“But I have no more thread.”
“Miserable deceiver!” cried the girl. “He saith he hath no more thread, yet all the while he possesseth two great balls of it!”[49]
VARIANT.
Béroalde de Verville, in Le Moyen de Parvenir, has a similar tale. As it differs in several respects from our Kruptadia version, we give it here. Our extract is from Arthur Machen’s text, which is, so far as we know, the only English translation of the old French Canon’s much censured work.[50] Donatus, one of the characters in the book, is speaking:—