"I ask you if it was not very wicked for a monk to pay any attention to the color of my eyes? I told him that he might stay a year under my window before I would look to see what color his were. He called me a flirt; a strange word, isn't it, in the mouth of a man who ought not even to know that there is such a word? I closed my window, but when I opened it a quarter of an hour later, being unable to endure the stifling heat in my room when the sun is high, he was still looking at me. I refused to talk to him any more. He told me that he would stay there until I gave him something better than bread; that he knew that I wasn't a poor girl; that I had a beautiful pin of chased gold in my hair, and that he would gladly accept that, unless I preferred to give him a lock of hair in its place. And he followed that up with such absurd and extravagant compliments that I believed and still believe he was laughing at me, and that it was his spiteful and unseemly way of venting his anger. "As there were people in the house, particularly your father and one of your brothers, whom I could see working in their rooms within reach of my voice, I was not alarmed by that wretched monk's strange remarks and impertinent glances; I answered only by making fun of him, and, to get rid of him, I promised to give him something on condition that he would go away at once. He declared that he had the right to accept or refuse my offering, and that, if I would let him choose, he would be very modest and would not ruin me.--'What do you want,' I said, 'a skein of silk to mend your ragged frock?'--'No,' he replied, 'it's too badly spun.'--'Do you want my scissors to cut your beard, which is growing all awry?'--'No, for I might perhaps use it to cut off the rosy tip of that impertinent little tongue.'--'A needle, then, to sew up your mouth, which doesn't know what it says?'--'No, for I am afraid that your needle has no sharper point than your epigrams.' "We jested thus for some time; although he annoyed me, he made me laugh; for it seemed to me that his manner had become more fatherly than threatening, that he was really a monk, one of those persistent jokers such as we all know, who obtain by teasing what they cannot extort by prayer; and lastly, I discovered that he was very bright, and I did not put a stop to that childish badinage so soon as I should have done. I took from the wall a little mirror about the size of my hand, of no value, which he had noticed hanging by my window, as to which he asked me how many hours a day I passed consulting it. I lowered it to him by a silk thread, saying that he would certainly enjoy looking at himself in it much more than I had enjoyed having his face before my eyes so long. "He seized it eagerly and kissed it, exclaiming in a tone which frightened me: 'Has it retained a reflection of your beauty, O dangerous maiden? Just a reflection! that is very little, but if I could fix it there, I would never take my lips from it.'