The king thought the old lord's counsel good; he caused the lady and her husband to be put in prison apart, and questioned separately with threats if they kept silence; till at length the lady, terrified, confessed how she had betrayed her first husband, by causing his garments to be stolen from him when he was in a wolf's shape. Since that time he had disappeared; she knew not whether he were alive or dead, but she thought that perchance this wolf was he. When the king heard this he commanded them to fetch the garments belonging to the lost knight, whether it were pleasing to the lady or no; and when they were brought he laid them before the wolf and waited to see what would chance. But the wolf made as if he saw them not, and the wise councillor said, "Sire, if this beast be indeed a were-wolf he will not change shapes while there are any to behold him; since it is only with great pain and difficulty he can do so. Bid them take wolf and garments into thine own chamber, and fasten the doors upon him; then leave him for a while, and we shall see if he become man." The king thought this counsel good, and he himself took the beast into his chamber and made the doors fast. Then they waited for a space that seemed long enough to the king, and when the old lord told him he might well do so, he took two nobles with him, and unlocked the doors, and entered, and lo, on the king's couch lay the long lost knight in a deep slumber! The king ran to him and embraced him warmly; and when the first wonder had somewhat passed, he bade him take back all the lands of which he had been robbed, and over and above he bestowed upon him many rich gifts. The treacherous wife and her second husband were banished from the country; many years they lived in a strange land, and had children and grand-children--but all their descendants might be known by this, that the maidens were born without noses, so that they won the surname of _énasées_. And the old books say that this adventure was verily true, and that it was in order that the memory of it should be preserved to all time that the Bretons put it in verse, and called it "The Lai of the Were-Wolf." Notes GUINGAMOR. This charming lay was first published by M. Gaston Paris (Romania VIII.) from the same MS. collection as the _Lay of Tyolet_. The author is unnamed, but the general consensus of critical opinion has attributed it to Marie de France, the famous Anglo-Norman poetess. Certainly both in manner and matter it is a remarkably favourable specimen of the Breton lay.