“Father, take care you do not cross the line, or the clerk will lay you down and tumble you as he did mother a few days ago.”
The lawyer heard the remark, and saw the line, but knew not what to think; but if he remembered that fools, drunkards, and children always tell the truth, at all events he made no sign, and it has never come to my knowledge that he ever did so, either through want of confirmation of his suspicions, or because he feared to make a scandal.
STORY THE TWENTY-FOURTH — HALF-BOOTED. [24]
By Monseigneur De Fiennes.
Of a Count who would ravish by force a fair, young girl who was one of his subjects, and how she escaped from him by means of his leggings, and how he overlooked her conduct and helped her to a husband, as is hereafter related.
I know that in many of the stories already related the names of the persons concerned are not stated, but I desire to give, in my little history, the name of Comte Valerien, who was in his time Count of St. Pol, and was called “the handsome Count”. Amongst his other lordships, he was lord of a village in the district of Lille, called Vrelenchem, about a league distant from Lille.