THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
few short words to each other, so that Miles began to sight heavily for love. They grew to love each
other violently, but confined their behavior to acts of honest love, so that no one should take notice;
and for almost a whole year no one realized that they were in love.
The first man to notice it was Charles, who however was so fond of Miles that he said nothing to
him, though he loved as much as before. However, he ordered a better guard of chambermaids and
gentlewoman for Bertha and kept her more closely confined than was his wont. Not that he
suspected anything, but he was thinking of having her married.
For this reason the two were unable to see each other, and this, far from making their love go away,
so much increased it that Bertha with her own hand wrote a letter to Miles and sent it to him by her
confidential waiting woman, in which she told him to come and talk to her at a window that faced
the king’s garden, and because the window was a little high, she gave careful instructions about
everything. When Miles had received and read this letter, he was so delighted and so overcome by
blind love, that he gave no thought to either Charles or shame or death. He went up at midnight,
carrying a rope ladder, and spoke with Bertha. The window was barred and he could not enter, but
they agreed that Miles should dress himself as a veiled widow, and that he should change his clothes
in the house of a lady who had served Bertha while she was in kept under arrest. And so Miles
departed.
On the next day he came to that lady’s house and bribed her with money; he did not, however, tell
her where he intended to go, for she would then never have agreed to do it. Bertha, at the
appointed hour, sent one of her maids to him, saying to her: “Go to such and such a place and bring
me the veiled woman whom you will find there. Moreover, since she is young and a widow, bring
her in secret and in a decent manner.” The maid went there, found the disguised Miles, and believed