Guillem de Nevers ingratiates himself with the priest, who accepts him as his clerk, and in this disguise the lover succeeds in entering the private pew, from which, thickly veiled and concealed by a trellis work, Flamenca is allowed to attend mass. When the clerk approaches the lady to let her kiss the mass-book according to sacred rite, she is struck with his beauty, and still more astonished when, instead of a sacred formula, he breathes a suggestive _Ailas_! (alas). More than these two syllables he dares not utter in the presence of the watchful Archimbaut. Flamenca, on her return home, begins to muse on the strange behaviour of the clerk. At first she feels almost aggrieved by his exclamation. ‘What right has he,’ she says, ‘to be miserable? he is strong, and free, and happy. Maybe he is mocking my own suffering. And why should he be so cruel as to add to my grief? Tears and sighs are my lot. A slave compelled to carry wood and water is enviable compared with me. My fate could not be worse even if I had a rival and a mother-in-law.’ But the two chambermaids know better. With the sagacity of their class they at once fathom the mystery. ‘Your beauty,’ Margarida suggests, ‘has ravished his heart, and, as he has no other way of speaking to you, he has exposed himself to great peril to let you know the state of his feelings.’ An answer has now to be thought of, and the united wisdom of the three fair conspirators decides upon the query _Que plans?_ (what is your complaint?) and these two syllables, softly whispered, gladden the heart of Guillem on the ensuing Sunday. His immoderate rapture on seeing his passion noticed by its fair object gives rise to a remark on the part of the poet which strangely foreshadows the celebrated dying speech of Cardinal Wolsey. ‘If Guillem,’ the passage runs literally, ‘had served God as he served Love and his lady, he would have been lord of Paradise.’ Flamenca on her part is most anxious to be certain that her frightened whisper has been understood, and the poet describes with masterly touches a charming scene in the lady’s closet, when Alice has to take a book—it is the romance of Blanchefleur—and hold it exactly in the position and at the distance that Guillem has presented the missal. The lady then bending over the pages whispers the two syllables, and inquires whether she has been heard, which question the obliging chambermaid answers with an ‘Oh, certainly, Madam! if you have spoken in such a tone, he must have understood you.’