_Tesiez, vous monterez là sus_ _En cel solier tout coiement._
The monk, before he enters the house, passes through the court (_cortil_), in which there is a sheepcot (_bercil_), or perhaps a stable. The husband from the soler above looks through a lattice or grate and sees all that passes in the hall--
The stairs seem, therefore, to have been outside the hall, with a latticed window looking into it from the top. The monk appears to have entered the hall by the back door, and the chamber is adjacent to the hall (as in houses which had no soler), on the side opposite to that on which were the stairs. When another monk comes, the husband hides himself under the stairs (_souz le degré_). The bodies of the monks (who are killed by the husband) are carried out _parmi une fausse posterne_ which leads into the fields (_aus chans_). In the fabliau of _La Saineresse_, a woman who performs the operation of bleeding comes to the house of a burgher, and finds the man and his wife seated on a bench in the yard before the hall--
The lady says she wants bleeding, and takes her upstairs into the soler:--
_Montez là sus en cel solier,_ _Il m’estuet de vostre mestier._
They enter, and close the door. The apartment on the soler, although there was a bed in it, is not called a chamber, but a room or saloon (_perrin_):--
_Si se descendent del perrin,_ _Contreval les degrez enfin_ _Vindrent errant en la maison._
The expression that they came down the stairs, and _into the house_, shows that the staircase was outside.
In another fabliau, _De la borgoise d’Orliens_, a burgher comes to his wife in the disguise of her gallant, and the lady, discovering the fraud, locks him up in the soler, pretending he is to wait there till the household is in bed--
_Je vous metrai privéement_ _En un solier dont j’ai la clef._
She then goes to meet her _ami_, and they come from the garden (_vergier_) direct into the chamber without entering the hall. Here she tells him to wait while she goes _in there_ (_là dedans_), to give her people their supper, and she leaves him while she goes into the hall. The lady afterwards sends her servants to beat her husband, pretending him to be an importunate suitor whom she wishes to punish! “he waits for me up there in that room:”--