Did I not lead the dance with him at the Burgrave's festival, the twain of us braver than morning?
Sat I not with him in the garden of St.Vaast, his head in my lap, while he sang me virelays of the south?
What was Willebald to me or his lean grey wife to him?
He made me his queen, me the burgher wife, at the jousting at Courtrai, when the horses squealed like pigs in the mellay and I wept in fear for him.

Ah, the lost sweet days! Philip, my darling, you make a brave gentleman, but you will not equal him who loved your mother." The Cluniac was a man of the world whom no confidences could scandalise.
But he had business of his own to speak of that night, and he thought it wise to break into this mood of reminiscence.
"The young lord, Philip, your son, madam?
You have great plans for him?
What does he at the moment ?" The softness went out of the voice and the woman's gaze came back to the chamber.

"That I know not.

Travelling the ways of the world and plucking roadside fruits, for he is no home-bred and womanish stripling.

Wearing his lusty youth on the maids, I fear.