Now looking up, the angelic shepherdess
Wonders at the troubled lady, and moved
To compassion, she calls to her companions:
“What’s happened? Can some thorn have pierced her foot?”
“A thorn has pierced my heart,” replies the countess;
“You sing so sweet and I am racked with grief,
I, who am the Countess of Cerdanya,
The princess of this Pyrenean precinct.
Can you have come upon within these woods
The fount of joy that cures the sad of heart?”
“Indeed, I happened on it one spring day,
A skysome day my soul will not forget;
But alas! it came to pass that soon
My heartache dimmed that sparkle once so pure.”
“Who is this lad you love?” inquires the countess.
“He is the flower of lads that grace these banks;
Fair angel among knights who serve the count.
Unknown to you alone—who are his aunt?”
“Gentil?” utters the countess, seized with dread.
“Gentil!” sighs the maid by way of reply;
And the poor wife of he who bore the blame
Now drops as if struck by a deadly bolt,
Her lips of carmine turned to chilling frost,
Each rosy cheek now blanched a white musk rose.

Her handmaids carry her off in their arms
Toward the palace she left that erring hour,
Like a living cadaver toward the tomb,
Whence she sees, above, the tomb of her love.
Conflent, her farmsteads and her towns now weep,
And lone turtledoves in their nests now weep,
And low skies, where the tempest breaks, are like
The eyes of Guisla, a fountain of grief.
But fair Griselda has no tears to cry
When, simple at heart, it all comes to her;
She has no tears to cry because in life
The cruelest storms set in completely dry;
And so, unable to pour out her pain,
She muddies her head of flowering years,
And forfeits all sense—so lovely a star
That fades into a falling night of madness.