Droll Stories from the Abbeys of Touraine | Page 7

So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature,
even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the
animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the
archbishop with his head full of diabolical longings and his entrails
sophisticated.
Once in his little room he counted his coins all night long, but could
make no more than four of them; and as that was all his treasure, he
counted upon satisfying the fair one by giving her all he had in the
world.
"What is it ails you?" said the good archbishop, uneasy at the groans
and "oh! oh's!" of his clerk.
"Ah! my Lord," answered the poor priest, "I am wondering how it is
that so light and sweet a woman can weigh so heavily upon my heart."
"Which one?" said the archbishop, putting down his breviary which he
was reading for others--the good man.
"Oh! Mother of God! You will scold me, I know, my good master, my
protector, because I have seen the lady of a cardinal at the least, and I
am weeping because I lack more than one crown to enable me to
convert her."
The archbishop, knitting the circumflex accent that he had above his
nose, said not a word. Then the very humble priest trembled in his skin
to have confessed so much to his superior. But the holy man directly
said to him, "She must be very dear then--"

"Ah!" said he, "she has swallowed many a mitre and stolen many a
cross."
"Well, Philippe, if thou will renounce her, I will present thee with thirty
angels from the poor-box."
"Ah! my lord, I should be losing too much," replied the lad,
emboldened by the treat he promised himself.
"Ah! Philippe," said the good prelate, "thou wilt then go to the devil
and displease God, like all our cardinals," and the master, with sorrow,
began to pray St. Gatien, the patron saint of Innocents, to save his
servant. He made him kneel down beside him, telling him to
recommend himself also to St. Philippe, but the wretched priest
implored the saint beneath his breath to prevent him from failing if on
the morrow that the lady should receive him kindly and mercifully; and
the good archbishop, observing the fervour of his servant, cried out him,
"Courage little one, and Heaven will exorcise thee."
On the morrow, while Monsieur was declaiming at the Council against
the shameless behaviour of the apostles of Christianity, Philippe de
Mala spent his angels--acquired with so much labour--in perfumes,
baths, fomentations, and other fooleries. He played the fop so well, one
would have thought him the fancy cavalier of a gay lady. He wandered
about the town in order to find the residence of his heart's queen; and
when he asked the passers-by to whom belonged the aforesaid house,
they laughed in his face, saying--
"Whence comes this precious fellow that has not heard of La Belle
Imperia?"
He was very much afraid he and his angels were gone to the devil when
he heard the name, and knew into what a nice mess he had voluntarily
fallen.
Imperia was the most precious, the most fantastic girl in the world,
although she passed for the most dazzling and the beautiful, and the
one who best understood the art of bamboozling cardinals and
softening the hardiest soldiers and oppressors of the people. She had
brave captains, archers, and nobles, ready to serve her at every turn.
She had only to breathe a word, and the business of anyone who had
offended her was settled. A free fight only brought a smile to her lips,
and often the Sire de Baudricourt--one of the King's Captains-- would
ask her if there were any one he could kill for her that day--a little joke

at the expense of the abbots. With the exception of the potentates
among the high clergy with whom Madame Imperia managed to
accommodate her little tempers, she ruled everyone with a high hand in
virtue of her pretty babble and enchanting ways, which enthralled the
most virtuous and the most unimpressionable. Thus she lived beloved
and respected, quite as much as the real ladies and princesses, and was
called Madame, concerning which the good Emperor Sigismund
replied to a lady who complained of it to him, "That they, the good
ladies, might keep to their own proper way and holy virtues, and
Madame Imperia to the sweet naughtiness of the goddess
Venus"--Christian words which shocked the good ladies, to their credit
be it said.
Philippe, then thinking over it in his mind that which on the preceding
evening he had seen with his eyes, doubted if more did not remain
behind. Then was he sad, and without taking bite or sup,