“Peace!” he commanded, but he was much amused.
“I too was in love,” she answered, “and women stole my lover from me as the robbers stole my cow, and I was sick. I wasted away, but the good God who sent me Monseigneur put it into my heart to go to the wise woman who lives at ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold’——”
“The Cock——?”
“’Tis a new tavern in the woods by the village yonder,” she replied earnestly, “and a wise woman lives there. For one piece of silver she brought me back my lover. They say she is a witch, but she is no witch, for with the help of the good God she cured my sickness and changed my lover’s heart so that once again he was as he had been.”
“Tush!” André interrupted, impatiently.
“But it is true,” she persisted. “And if Monseigneur is in distress, he, too, should go to the wise woman, and she will make him happy. It is so, it is so.”
“Adieu, my child, adieu!”
“Monseigneur will not forget. ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,’ in the woods——”
He gave her matted head a pat. It was a pity she was not pretty, this wench, for she had a buxom figure. “A soldier,” he said lightly, “does not love wise women, Yvonne, he loves only the young and the fair and he wins them not by sorcery, but by his sword.”
“Monseigneur is a soldier?” she asked with grave interest.