_That lady was not for to hyde,_ _Sche sett hym on hur beddys syde,_ _And welcomyd home thet knyght._ Again, in a fabliau printed by Meon, a woman of a lower grade, wishing to make a private communication to a man, invites him into her chamber, and they sit on the bed to converse-- _En une chanbre andui en vont,_ _Desor un lit asis se sont._ And in the fabliau of “Guillaume au Faucon,” printed by Barbazan, Guillaume, visiting the lady of a knight in her chamber, finds her seated on the bed, and he immediately takes a seat by her side to converse with her. In the illuminated manuscripts, scenes of this kind occur frequently; but in the fourteenth century, instead of being seated on the bed, the persons thus conversing sit on a bench which runs along the side of the bed, and seems to belong to the bedstead. A scene of this kind is represented in our cut No. 186 (taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum, MS. Addit. No. 12,228, fol. 312), which is a good representation of a bed of the fourteenth century. A lady has introduced a king into her chamber, and they are conversing privately, seated on the bench of the bed. In some of these illuminations, the persons conversing are seated on the bed, with their feet on the bench. [Illustration: _No. 186. Conversation in the Chamber._] [Illustration: _No. 187. Taking Clothes from the Chest._] The illuminators had not yet learned the art of representing things in detail, and they still too often give us mere conventional representations of beds, yet we see enough to convince us that the bedsteads were already made much more elaborately than formerly. Besides the bench at the side, we find them now with a hutch (_huche_) or locker at the foot, in which the possessor was accustomed to lock up his money and other valuables. This hutch at the foot of the bed is often mentioned in the fabliaux and romances. Thus, in the fabliau “Du chevalier à la Robe Vermeille,” a man, when he goes to bed, places his robe on a hutch at the foot of the bed-- _Sur une huche aus piez du lit_ _A cil toute sa robe mise._ Another, having extorted some money from a priest, immediately puts it in the hutch-- _Les deniers a mis en la huche._