"Leixant a part le stil dels trobados,
Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa,
Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa:
Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos."
THE THIRD NOVEL.--MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED
GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT
CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS
IT.
_The Story of the Rat-Trap_
In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas
begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his
kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was
perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to
surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne
nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to
King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before
this time.
The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his
daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters
through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was
possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's
descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the
house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an
emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to
throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled
Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to
treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the
Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural
son by Hawise Bulmer.
The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came
this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the
barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were
the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of
the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor
of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where
sat King Philippe.
The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once
or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of
ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary.
"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I
was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony
be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might
have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the
province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of
loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as
your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor
my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe."
With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the
public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private
grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard answer
before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely
laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward
lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of
Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador.
Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with
zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician
so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency
with a parrot-like reiteration of the circumstance that already the
bargain was signed and sworn to: in consequence, while daily they fumed
over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he
was, upon one pretext or another, very often in the company of his
affianced wife, Dame Blanch.
This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could
nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she
compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently but in
an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely
by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many
perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man,
near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, and the bright unequal
eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read at Mezelais began to liken
this so candidly enamored monarch and his Princess to Sieur Hercules at
the feet of Queen Omphale.
The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueïl,
which stand thick about the château; and at the hunt's end, these two
had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett,
the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the
betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know, nowadays,
it was not merely the trees she was considering.
Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. "We have slain the stag, beau
sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day
we have had our sport of death,--and presently the gay years wind past
us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel
slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we
shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have
his sport of us, as if in atonement." Her big eyes shone, as when the
sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohé, I have known such happiness
of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die."