Dame Oisille responded in a manner most edifying: “My children, you ask me a thing that I find very difficult, namely: to teach you a pastime which shall deliver you from ennui. Having searched for this remedy all my life, I have found but one, and that is the reading of Holy Epistles, in which will be found the true and perfect joy of the soul, from which proceeds the repose and health of the body.” But the joyous company cannot keep wholly to so austere a system, and it is agreed that the time shall be divided between the sacred and the profane. Early in the morning the company assembled in the chamber of Dame Oisille to share in her moral readings, and from there they went to mass. They dined at ten o’clock, after which, having retired each to his or her chamber for private affairs, they met again about mid-day on the meadow: “And, if it please you, every day, from mid-day till four o’clock, we went through the beautiful meadow, on the banks of the river du Gave, where the trees are so leafy that the sun cannot pierce the shadows, or heat the coolness; and there, seated at our ease, each told some story he had known, or else heard from a trustworthy person.” For it was well understood that nothing should be told that was not _true_; narrators must be content to disguise, if necessary, the names of both persons and places. The company numbered ten; as many men as women, and each told a story daily; so it followed that in ten days the hundred tales would be completed. Every afternoon, at four o’clock, a bell was rung, giving notice that it was time to go to vespers; the company went,--not, however, without sometimes obliging the monks to wait for them; to which delay the latter lent themselves with very good grace. Thus rolled the time away, no one believing that he or she had passed the limits of sanctioned gayety or committed any sin.