“Fair children,” said Aucassin, “enough have you said; and God grant me to find it!”
Here they sing.
Aucassin has word for word
Of his lithe-limbed lady heard;
Deep they pierced him to the quick;
From the herds he parted quick,
Struck into the greenwood thick.
Quickly stepped his gallant steed,
Bore him fairly off full speed.
Then he spake, three words he said:
“Nicolette, O lithe-limbed maid!
For your sake I thrid the glade!
Stag nor boar I now pursue,
But the sleuth I track for you!
Your bright eyes and body lithe,
Your sweet words and laughter blithe,
Wounded have my heart to death.
So God, the strong Father will,
I shall look upon you still,
Sister, sweet friend!”
Here they speak and tell the story.
Aucassin went through the forest this way and that way, and his good steed carried him a great pace. Think not that the briars and thorns spared him! Not a whit! Nay they tore his clothes so, that ’twere hard work to have patched them together again; and the blood flowed from his arms and his sides and his legs in forty places or thirty; so that one could have followed the boy by the trace of the blood that fell upon the grass. But he thought so much on Nicolette, his sweet friend, that he felt neither hurt nor pain. All day long he rode through the forest, but so it was that he never heard news of her. And, when he saw that evening drew on, he began to weep because he found her not.
He was riding down an old grassy road, when he looked before him in the way and saw a boy,
and I will tell you what he was like. He was tall of stature and wonderful to see, so ugly and hideous. He had a monstrous shock-head black as coal, and there was more than a full palm-breadth between his two eyes; and he had great cheeks, and an immense flat nose, with great wide nostrils, and thick lips redder than a roast, and great ugly yellow teeth. He was shod in leggings and shoes of ox-hide, laced with bast to above the knee; and was wrapped in a cloak which seemed inside out either way on, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassin sprang to meet him, and was terrified at the nearer sight of him.
“Fair brother, may God help you!”
“May God bless you!” said he.