One day the maid was in a back room bolting meal, and wearing her “sarot,” a kind of hood which, after the fashion of that country, not only formed a coif but covered the whole of the back and shoulders. Her master, finding her in this trim, came and urged her very pressingly, and, although she would not have done such a thing even to save her life, she pretended to consent, and asked leave to go first and see whether her mistress was engaged in some such manner that they might not be surprised together. To this he agreed; whereupon she begged him to put her hood upon his head and to continue bolting whilst she was away, in order that her mistress might still hear the noise of the bolter. And this he gladly did, in the hope of obtaining what he sought. The maid, who was by no means inclined to melancholy, ran off to her mistress and said to her-- “Come and see your good husband, whom I have taught to bolt in order to be rid of him.” The wife made all speed to behold this new serving-woman, and when she saw her husband with the hood upon his head and the bolter in his hands, she began to laugh so exceedingly, clapping her hands the while, that she was scarce able to say to him-- “How much dost want a month, wench, for thy labour?” The husband, on hearing this voice, realised that he had been deceived, and, throwing down both what he was holding and wearing, he ran at the girl, calling her a thousand bad names. Had his wife not set herself in front of the maid, he would have given her wage enough for her quarter; but at last all was settled to the content of the parties concerned, and thenceforward they lived together without quarrelling. (2) 2 The Italian Charles, equerry to the King, to whom the leading part is assigned in Queen Margaret’s tale, may have been Charles de San Severino, who figures among the equerries with a salary of 200 _livres_, in the roll of the royal household for 1522. The San Severino family, one of the most prominent of Naples, had attached itself to the French cause at the time of the expedition of Charles VIII., whom several of its members followed to France. In 1522 we find a “Monsieur de Saint-Severin” holding the office of first _maître d’hôtel_ to Francis I., and over a course of several years his son figures among the _enfants d’honneur_.--B. J. and Ed. “What say you, ladies, of this wife? Was she not sensible to make sport of her husband’s sport?” “‘Twas no sport,” said Saffredent, “for the husband who failed in his purpose.” “I believe,” said Ennasuite, “that he had more delight in laughing with his wife, than at killing himself at his age with his serving-woman.” “Still, I should be sorely vexed,” said Simontault, “to be discovered so bravely coifed.”