If ever man was rejoiced it was the Duke, for, knowing as he did the exceeding beauty of his niece, he now had no doubt that she was more pleasing than his wife. However, being unable to understand how so great a mystery could have been contrived, he begged the gentleman to tell him how it was that he was able to see her. The gentleman related to him then that his lady’s chamber looked upon a garden, and that, on the days when he was to visit her, a little gate was left open through which he went in on foot until he heard the barking of a little dog which the lady used to loose in the garden when all her women were withdrawn. Then he went and conversed with her all night long, and, in parting from her, would appoint a day on which he would return; and this appointment, unless for some weighty reason, he never failed to keep. The Duke, who was the most inquisitive man alive, and who had made love in no small degree in his day, wished both to satisfy his suspicions and to fully understand so strange a business; and he therefore begged the gentleman to take him, not as a master but as a companion, the next time he went thither. To this the gentleman, having gone so far already, consented, saying that he had an appointment for that very day; at which the Duke was as glad as if he had gained a kingdom. Making pretence of retiring to rest in his closet, he caused two horses to be brought for himself and the gentleman, and they travelled all night long from Argilly, where the Duke lived, to Le Vergier. (2) 2 At Argilly the Dukes of Burgundy had a castle, which was destroyed during the religious wars at the close of the sixteenth century. The place is now a small village in the arrondissement of Nuits, Côte d’Or. As the crow flies, it is some ten miles distant from the ruins of the castle of Vergy, which stands on a steep height, at an altitude of over 1600 ft., within five miles from Nuits. The castle, which can only be reached on one side of the hill, by a narrow, winding and precipitous pathway, is known to have been in existence already in the tenth century, when the Lords of Vergy were Counts of Chalons, Beaune, and Nuits. They appear to have engaged in a struggle for supremacy with the princes of the first Ducal house of Burgundy, but in 1193 Alix de Vergy espoused Duke Eudes III., to whom she brought, as dower, the greater part of the paternal inheritance. The castle of Vergy was dismantled by Henry IV., and the existing ruins are of small extent. Some antiquaries believe the fortress to have been originally built by the Romans.--B.J. and L. Then they left their horses without the wall, and the gentleman brought the Duke into the garden through the little gate, begging him to remain behind a walnut-tree, whence he might see whether he had been told the truth or not.