Page:Edmund Dulac's picture-book for the French Red cross.djvu/123

 AN OLD WORLD IDYLL

, being attacked and besieged by his mortal enemy, Count Bougars de Valence, was hard beset and in evil plight. He therefore besought his only son, Aucassin, a stalwart and handsome young man of excellent virtue, to take arms against the foe. Aucassin refused to enter to battle unless he were given to wife his true love Nicolette; but his father answered that Nicolette was a slave-girl and a stranger, bought long ago from the Saracens, and no fit mate for his son. Aucassin declared that Nicolette was fit to occupy any queen's throne, and he would not be dissuaded from his love. So the Count Garin de Biaucaire spoke privily with his vassal, the captain of the city, that he should send away Nicolette forthwith, 'for, if I could do my will upon her,' said the Nicolette, 'I would burn her in a fire.' The captain of the city, Nicolette's foster-father, who had bought her, had her baptized, and brought her up, was distressed at this; but, having knowledge that Aucassin was enamoured of the maiden, he shut her up in a richly painted chamber in his palace, which looked through one small window into the garden. There Nicolette was kept in durance, with one old woman to attend her; and she saw the roses, and heard the birds in the garden, and resolved that she would escape to her own true love.

Nicolette being thus shut away, it was rumoured through all the land how she was lost; and some said that Count Garin de Biaucaire had slain her. Thereupon Aucassin, in great sorrow and anger, went and demanded her of the captain. But he got no satisfaction from the captain, who advised him, even as his father had done, to 81