“Ho, ye saucy little knaves! Know ye not the good king will have no brawlers upon these palace grounds? Take that, sirrahs! and see to it that ye behave more seemly hereafter.” The pages being thus forcibly separated, Pierrot ran as fast as his legs could carry him up the palace stairs, and burst into his master’s chamber, panting out indignantly: “Dear Lord Reynaurd, the wicked Count William has stolen thy beautiful song and will win the prize! And I tried to stop Henri, and—o-o-oh—” Here poor Pierrot, still smarting under the cuff from the seneschal, quite broke down, and was obliged to double his fists very hard and bite his lips to keep back the angry tears. At first Count Reynaurd gasped with astonishment, and then jumped up in a towering passion. But by and by his wits came back to him, and he remembered that Count William had always been a good friend of his; but then his heart misgave him as he remembered, too, that Count William was a famous joker, and loved a jest above all things. The more he thought of it, the more sure he felt that William only meant in some way to tease him, though he could not understand how he had learned the song. Just then his eyes fell on the door, that Pierrot in his haste had left unfastened, as usual; and then it flashed through Count Reynaurd’s mind how Count William had found out about the music. Reynaurd, moreover, had no doubt but that, before the king, William would probably sing the piece as his own,—a thing which he could easily do, as René had announced that they would be called on in alphabetical order, according to the names of their domains; and as Auvergne thus came before Poitiers, Reynaurd knew that Count William would sing first, and that it would then be hard to make the people believe that the song was his and not William’s; yet he determined, if possible, to try in some way to get the better of him. He thought and thought very hard for a little while, and then suddenly he said to Pierrot: “Pierrot, dost thou still remember the Latin tongue that good Father Ambrose taught thee last winter in our castle in Poitiers?” The little page assured his lord that he did, for he was really a clever scholar in the Latin tongue, which both his master and the Count William understood but indifferently. Then Count Reynaurd called him close to his side, and whispered a plan to him that seemed to please them both mightily. Pierrot at once took the goose-quill pen that Reynaurd handed him, and after screwing up his face and working very carefully, he wrote these lines: Hoc carmen non composui, Quod cano, quod cano! and this he took great pains to teach his master. The next day Count Reynaurd sang his song over again and again, and Pierrot purposely left the door ajar. Count William noticed that after every stanza there were two new lines added in another tongue: Hoc carmen non composui, Quod cano, quod cano! At first this puzzled Count William very much indeed.