This did her great honour. Yet more deserving still was another I have heard tell of, which was in the train of a great lady. This lady was married, and being surprised by her husband in her chamber receiving a little paper note or _billet doux_ from her lover, was right well succoured by her subordinate. For this last, cleverly intercepting the note, did swallow down the same at one gulp without making any bones about it and without the husband perceiving aught, who would have treated his wife very ill indeed, if he had once seen the inside. This was a very noble piece of service, and one the great lady was always grateful for. On the other hand I wot well of ladies which have found them in evil case for having overmuch trusted their serving maids, and others again for not having trusted them at all. I have heard speak of a fair and honourable lady, who had taken and chose out a gentleman, one of the bravest, most valiant and well accomplished of all France, to give the same pleasure and delight of herself. She would never trust any one of her women, and assignation being given in a friend’s house, it was concerted and arranged there should be but one bed in the chamber, her women all sleeping in the antechamber. As settled, so done. And as there was a cat’s-hole in the door, which they had not remembered or provided for till the moment, they bethought them to stop this with a thin board, to the end that if any pushed it down, it would make a rattle, which they would hear and could take measures accordingly. One of her women, suspecting a snake in the grass, and angry and hurt because her mistress had not confided in her, whom she had ever made her chiefest confidante, and had given many proofs thereof, doth now make up her mind, so soon as her mistress was to bed, to keep a look out and listen at the door. She could hear quite well a low murmuring, yet was sure ’twas not the reading aloud her mistress had for some days indulged in in bed, with a candle, the better to dissemble what she was going to do. Just as she was on the tip-toe of curiosity, to know more, an excellent occasion did present itself most opportunely. For a kitten happening to come into the room, she and her companions take the animal and push it through the cat’s-hole into her mistress’ chamber, not of course without knocking down the board that kept it closed and making a clatter. At this the pair of lovers, sore startled, did suddenly sit up in bed, and saw by the light of their candle ’twas only a cat that had come in and knocked down the board. Wherefore without troubling more about it, they laid them down again, seeing ’twas now late and everybody presumably asleep, but never shut to again the cat’s-hole, leaving the same open for the cat to go out again by, as they did not care to have it shut up in their room all night long. Seizing so good an opportunity, the said waiting maid and her companions had a fine