A King of Albania, named Elinas, had married the beautiful Fay
Pressine, by whom he had three daughters at a birth, Melusine, Melior,
and Palatine. Fay had stipulated that he should never enter her chamber
during the period of her confinement; but the King having broken
his promise in his anxiety to embrace his newly-born children, the
Queen cried out that she was compelled to leave him, and immediately
disappeared with her three daughters. She retired to the Court of her
sister, the Queen of the "Isle Perdue," and as her children grew up,
instructed them in the art of sorcery. Melusine having learned from her
mother the conduct of her father, determined to be revenged on him,
and proceeding to Albania, by means of her newly-acquired art carried
off the King and shut him up in a mountain called Brandelois. The
Queen, who still retained some affection for her husband, on becoming
acquainted with this unnatural act, punished Melusine by sentencing
her to become every Saturday a serpent from the waist downwards, till
she should meet with a lover who would marry her on condition of never
intruding on her during the time of her transformation, when she was
ordered to bathe; with a promise that if she strictly attended to this
injunction, she might eventually be relieved from her weekly disgrace
and punishment. Melusine was excessively beautiful, and Raimondin,
son of the Count de Forez, having met with her in the forest of
Colombiers,[61] fell in love with her so deeply that he married her
without hesitation on the prescribed conditions. She built for him,
near the spot where they had met, the Castle of Lusignan, and bore him
several children; but her husband's jealousy being excited by a cousin,
who suggested to him that Melusine had a criminal object in secreting
herself on a Saturday, he made a hole with his sword in the door of the
chamber to which she was wont to retire, and perceived her in her state
of transformation. The various versions of this legend differ in the
details of the consequences; but all agree in stating that Melusine,
reproaching him with the breach of his word, disappeared, and left him
to end his days as a hermit on Montserrat. The popular belief was, that
she appeared on what was called the Tower of Melusine when any of the
lords of Lusignan were about to die; and Mezeray assures us, on the
faith "of people who were not by any means credulous," that previous
to the death of a Lusignan, or of a king of France, she was seen on
this tower in a mourning dress, and uttered for a long time the most
heart-piercing lamentations. The Duke de Montpensier destroyed the
castle in 1574, on account of the resistance made to his arms in it
by the Huguenots; but the family of Lusignan, till it merged in that
of Montmorency-Luxembourg, continued to bear for its crest a woman
bathing, in allusion to the story of Melusine.