midnight
This notwithstanding , you may be sure that she had highly perfumed and elegantly attired herself for the night , and shone with desire for embraces , for desire lent her a high colour which greatly improved her complexion ; and in spite of her feeble resistance she was , like a young girl , carried by assault in her royal couch , where the good lady and her young dozener , embraced each other . Then from play to quarrel , quarrel to riot , from riot to ribaldry , from thread to needle , the Regent declared that she believed more in the virginity of the Holy Mary than in the promised dozen . Now , by chance , Jacques de Beaune did not find this great lady so very old between the sheets , since everything is metamorphosed by the light of the lamps of the night . Many women of fifty by day are twenty at midnight , as others are twenty at mid-day and a hundred after vespers . Jacques , happier at this sight than at that of the King on a hanging day , renewed his undertaking . Madame , herself astonished , promised every assistance on her part . The manor of Azay-le-Brule , with a good title thereto , she undertook to confer upon her cavalier , as well as the pardon of his father , if from this encounter she came forth vanquished , then the clever fellows said to himself , `` This is to save my father from punishment !