Gottfried long forbore to respond to such innuendoes. Of what use would it be to try to explain to this silly old person that the court of King Francis was not the proper sphere for such a fat old woman as herself, or for a little maiden like Blanche, who would receive a kind of adulation before which the good, true-hearted warrior shuddered? Once, however, when Dame Isabella, more excited than usual, stormed in upon him and insisted that the young girl's future should be taken into immediate consideration, he gave her an angry answer. But it did not silence her, and though the worthy woman talked plenty of nonsense, yet she sometimes made a remark that Gottfried could not think wholly unjustifiable. "Blanche is eighteen years old!" stormed Dame Auberive; "if you do not wish her to marry you must resolve to place her in one of the nunneries, which are the only respectable refuge for unmarried women of her position." "Who told you that I did not want Blanche to marry?" exclaimed Gottfried, with anger and agitation; "it is only that I have not yet found any one good enough for her." But Dame Isabella replied with cutting scorn, "No one will ever seem to you good enough for her!" and bounced out of the room the picture of righteous indignation. Shortly after this it happened that a young knight was brought into the castle badly wounded; he had fallen among thieves, been robbed, and left unconscious by the roadside. He must be a man of rank, the servants thought who brought him in, for his dress, though soiled and torn, was of the finest material, and he wore the full beard with close-shaved hair which most of the courtiers wore in imitation of the king. Gottfried recognised in him a certain Henri de Lancy who, at the battle of Marignano, had fought beside him and won general admiration for his bravery, and had, more than all, dragged him--his old friend Gottfried--out of the thick of the battle after a ball had broken his leg. As he bent over the handsome youth lying there before him with closed eyes, so pale and helpless, an emotion of deep pity overcame Gottfried, and he exerted himself to the utmost to lavish on De Lancy all the comforts which the poor castle of Montalme could command. The sight of the wounded knight roused the quiet castle out of its phlegmatic drowsiness, and the heart of Dame Isabella beat so wildly that her orders confused the heads of her servants. Even through the veins of the innocent Blanche thrilled a strange, dreamy unrest. At that time there prevailed, together with a sultry kind of viciousness, compared with which modern profligacy appears petty and childish, a frank, genial naïveté, which is lost to our age with its prudish, artificial morality. The most delicate maiden did not hesitate, at that time, to lend help in nursing a sick man; and besides, women in that century--thanks to the rarity of doctors--found it necessary to acquire some knowledge of the healing art.