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I think I could amuse myself with the idiot. Where is he?" "Seigneur King, one of your attendants has gone out to find him.... I hear steps.... It is surely he coming." The door opened and a servitor bent the knee and let in Yvon.
A moment later the shadow began to steal towards him, and with a prodigious bound Yvon rushed at and seized the animal by the horns. The buck was large and struggled vigorously; but clambering himself around the horns with his left arm, Yvon plunged his knife with his right hand into the animal's throat.
Early the next morning they went to the church, where, to the joy of his heart, Yvon married Finette, who was no longer afraid of evil spirits; after which they ate, drank, and danced for thirty-six hours, without any one thinking of resting.
Closely pursued from various sides by the serfs of the castle, Yvon made several doublings in the yard in order to escape his tormentors, but perceiving Marceline, who, standing upon the first step of the turret stairs that she was about to ascend, contemplated the idiot with pity, he ran towards the young girl, and throwing himself at her feet said joining his hands: "Pardon me, Marceline, but protect poor Yvon against these wicked people!"
Since the death of his father, a forester serf, he lived with his grandmother, the washerwoman for the castle, who had received permission from the bailiff to keep her grandson near her. Yvon was at first employed in the stables; but having long lived in the woods, he looked so wild and stupid that he was presently taken for an idiot, went by the name of Yvon the Calf, and became the butt of all.
"I will obey," said Yvon; upon which he sat down by the side of Finette and began to talk with her. They talked of everything; but, however far their fancy strayed, they always came back to the point that they were promised to each other and that they must escape from the giant. Time passes quickly in this kind of talk. The evening drew nigh.
First there was the old baroness, a picturesque old lady with very white hair and piercing black eyes, with whom we have very little to do; then there was her eldest son, the present baron, for his father had been dead some years, and his beautiful young wife, whom he was so passionately fond of that he was jealous dreadfully jealous of her love for her baby, a little girl a few months old; and, lastly, there were the baron's three younger brothers, who with Père Yvon, the chaplain, made up the family party.
Poor Finette, seated on the seashore, waited all day long for Yvon, but Yvon did not come. The sun was setting in the fiery waves when Finette rose, sighing, and took the way to the castle in her turn. She had not walked long in a steep road, bordered with thorn-trees in blossom, when she found herself in front of a wretched hut at the door of which stood an old woman about to milk her cow.
Yvon had about thirty pupils, to whom his attentions were given gratuitously and conscientiously, three times a week, with rare exceptions of the Saturday visit, by the pupils regarded as the least important.
The baron seated the hundred knights at his table, and placed their squires behind their chairs to serve them. At his right he put the bride and Yvon, but he left the seat at his left vacant, and, calling a page, "Child," said he, "run to the house of the stranger lady who obliged us only too much this morning. It was not her fault if her success exceeded her good will.
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