“Sir,” said the Viscount, “’tis grief to me that he go to her, or come to her, or speak to her. I had bought her with my poor pieces. I had held her at the font, and christened her, and stood god-father to her; and I would have given her a young fellow to win bread for her in wedlock. What is this to Aucassin your son? But seeing your will is so and your good pleasure, I will send her to such a land and to such a country that he shall never set eyes on her more.”
“See you do so!” said Count Warren. “Else it might go ill with you.”
Thus they parted. Now the Viscount was a very rich man, and had a fine palace with a garden before it. He had Nicolette put in a room there, on an upper storey, with an old woman for company; and he had bread put there, and meat and wine and all they needed. Then he had the door locked, so that there was no way to get in or out. Only there was a window of no great size which looked on the garden and gave them a little fresh air.
Here they sing.
Nicolette is prisoner,
In a vaulted bed-chamber,
Strange of pattern and design,
Richly painted, rarely fine.
At the window-sill of stone
Leaned the maiden sad and lone.
Yellow was her shining hair,
And her eyebrow pencilled rare,
Face fine-curved and colour fair:
Never saw you lovelier.
Gazed she o’er the garden-ground,
Saw the opening roses round,
Heard the birds sing merrily;
Then she made her orphan cry:
“Woe’s me! what a wretch am I!
Caged and captive, why, ah why?
Aucassin, young lord, prithee,
Your sweetheart, am I not she?
Ay, methinks you hate not me.
For your sake I’m prisoner,
In this vaulted bed-chamber,
Where my life’s a weary one.
But by God, sweet Mary’s son,
Long herein I will not stay,
Can I find way!”
Here they speak and tell the story.
Nicolette was in prison, as you have harkened and heard, in the chamber. The cry and the noise ran through all the land and through all the country that Nicolette was lost. There are some say she is fled abroad out of the land. Other some that Warren, Count of Beaucaire, has had her done to death. Rejoice who might, Aucassin was not well pleased. But he went
straightway to the Viscount of the place, and thus addressed him: