“Sir Viscount, what have you done with Nicolette, my very sweet friend, the thing that I love best in all the world? Have you stolen and taken her from me? Rest assured that if I die of this thing, my blood will be required of you; and very justly, when you have gone and killed me with your two hands. For you have stolen from me the thing that I love best in all the world.”
“Fair sir,” said the Viscount, “now let be! Nicolette is a slave-girl whom I fetched from a foreign land and bought for money of the heathen. I held her at the font, and christened her and stood godfather to her, and have brought her up. One of these days I would have given her a young fellow to win bread for her in wedlock. What is this to you? Take you some king’s daughter or some count’s. Moreover, what were you profited, think you, had you made her your concubine, or taken her to live with you? Mighty little had you got by that, seeing that your soul would be in Hell for ever and ever, for to Paradise you would never win!”
“Paradise? What have I to do there? I seek not to win Paradise, so I have Nicolette
my sweet friend whom I love so well. For none go to Paradise but I’ll tell you who. Your old priests and your old cripples, and the halt and maimed, who are down on their knees day and night, before altars and in old crypts; these also that wear mangy old cloaks, or go in rags and tatters, shivering and shoeless and showing their sores, and who die of hunger and want and cold and misery. Such are they who go to Paradise; and what have I to do with them? Hell is the place for me. For to Hell go the fine churchmen, and the fine knights, killed in the tourney or in some grand war, the brave soldiers and the gallant gentlemen. With them will I go. There go also the fair gracious ladies who have lovers two or three beside their lord. There go the gold and the silver, the sables and ermines. There go the harpers and the minstrels and the kings of the earth. With them will I go, so I have Nicolette my most sweet friend with me.”
“I’ faith,” said the Viscount, “’tis but vain to speak of it; you will see her no more. Aye, were you to get speech of her and it came to your father’s ears, he would burn both her and me in a fire; and for yourself too you might fear the worst.”
“This is sore news to me,” said Aucassin. And he departed from the Viscount, sorrowful.
Here they sing.
Aucassin has turned once more
In wanhope and sorrow sore
For his love-friend bright of face.
None can help his evil case,
None a word of counsel say.
To the palace went his way;
Step by step he climbed the stair;
Entered in a chamber there.
Then he ’gan to weep alone,
And most dismally to groan,
And his lady to bemoan.
“Nicolette, ah, gracious air!
Coming, going, ever fair!
In thy talk and in thy toying,
In thy jest and in thy joying,
In thy kissing, in thy coying.
I am sore distressed for thee.
Such a woe has come on me
That I trow not to win free,
Sweet sister friend!”