Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/118

 the fluttering banners, though it was all done many an hundred year ago. And to this Court came many petitions from the Castle, and pleaded the Rebellion against our Liege Lord Love of Mistress Loyse, showing that she had never paid to him who is paramount lord of all women and men, her suit and service. And the Arrest d'Amour was duly proclaimed bidding this rebel make amends to her sovereign, and choose some gentleman to be her true lover, as you may read in the PaictesFaictes [sic] et Gestes joyeuses de la Cour Dorée, a book which is now in the King's Library at Paris. But still Loyse continued obstinate and kissed nobody but her mistress and the other girls, liked to have a room to herself, and went about dreamily, heeding not at all the frolicsome, merry, wanton, life that everybody beside herself was leading; I should say beside herself and the Hermetic Philosopher Dom Benedict Rotherham; but sweet Loyse did not remind one in the least of the adept, since, as I have above noted, his skin was too yellow and his eyes too burning to be pleasant to look at. Not to speak of his figure which was of quite a different shape from the maiden's.

But one day after Evensong, when the whole house was sitting down to supper, it appeared that Loyse was nowhere to be seen, for many soon missed her, though she gave droit d'amour to none. And first they went to her chamber, but she was not there; nor indeed in any other part of the castle, though no coign nor carrel was left unsearched from my lady's bower to the guard-room