festivities were held in her honour, and at some of the tilting
matches Fortunatus was lucky enough to win the prize. These
prizes, together with presents from the lords and ladies of the
court, who liked him for his pleasant ways, made Fortunatus feel
quite a rich man.

But though his head was not turned by the notice taken of him, it
excited the envy of some of the other pages about the Court, and
one of them, called Robert, invented a plot to move Fortunatus
out of his way. So he told the young man that the Earl had taken
a dislike to him and meant to kill him; Fortunatus believed the
story, and packing up his fine clothes and money, slipped away
before dawn.

He went to a great many big towns and lived well, and as he was
generous and not wiser than most youths of his age, he very soon
found himself penniless. Like his father, he then began to think
of work, and tramped half over Brittany in search of it. Nobody
seemed to want him, and he wandered about from one place to
another, till he found himself in a dense wood, without any
paths, and not much light. Here he spent two whole days, with
nothing to eat and very little water to drink, going first in one
direction and then in another, but never being able to find his
way out. During the first night he slept soundly, and was too
tired to fear either man or beast, but when darkness came on for
the second time, and growls were heard in the distance, he grew
frightened and looked about for a high tree out of reach of his
enemies. Hardly had he settled himself comfortably in one of the
forked branches, when a lion walked up to a spring that burst
from a rock close to the tree, and crouching down drank greedily.