THE FAVORITE IS ALARMED
Thus it befell that both Robert of Friedwald and Jacqueline accompanied
the emperor to the little town, the scene of their late adventures, and
that they who had been fool and joculatrix rode once more through the
street they had ne'er expected to see again. The flags were flying;
cannon boomed; they advanced beneath wreaths of roses, the way paved
with flowers. Standing at the door of his inn, the landlord dropped
his jaw in amazement as his glance fell upon the jestress and her
companion behind the great emperor himself. His surprise, too, was
abruptly voiced by a ragged, wayworn person not far distant in the
crowd, whose fingers had been busy about the pockets of his neighbors;
fingers which had a deft habit of working by themselves, while his eyes
were bent elsewhere and his lips joined in the general acclaim; fingers
which like antennas seemed to have a special intelligence of their own.
Now those long weapons of abstraction and appropriation ceased their
deft work; he became all eyes.
"Good lack! Who may the noble gentleman behind the emperor be?" he
exclaimed. "Surely 'tis the duke's fool."
"And ride with the emperor?" said a burly citizen at his elbow. "'Tis
thou who art the fool."
"Truly I think so," answered the other. "I see; believe; but may not
understand."
At that moment the duke's gaze in passing chanced to rest upon the
pinched and over-curious face of the scamp-student; a gleam of
recollection shone in his glance. "_Gladius gemmatus!_" cried the
scholar, and a smile on the noble's countenance told him he had heard.
Turning the problem in his mind, the vagrant-philosopher forgot about
pilfering and the procession itself, when a soldier touched him roughly
on the shoulder.
"Are you the scamp-student?" said the trooper.
"Now they'll hang me with these spoils in my pockets," thought the
scholar. But as bravely as might be, he replied: "The former I am; the
latter I would be."
"Then the Duke of Friedwald sent me to give you this purse," remarked
the man, suiting the action to the word. "He bade me say 'tis to take
the place of a bit of silver you once did not earn." And the trooper
vanished.
"Well-a-day!" commented the burly citizen, regarding the gold pieces
and the philosopher in wonderment of his own. "You may be a fool, but
you must be an honest knave."
At the château the meeting between the two monarchs was unreservedly
cordial on both sides. They spoke with satisfaction of the peace now
existing between them and of other matters social and political. The
emperor deplored deeply the untimely demise of Francis' son, Charles,
who had caught the infection of plague while sleeping at Abbeville.
Later the misalliance of the princess was cautiously touched upon.
That lady, said Francis gravely, to whom the gaieties of the court at
the present time could not fail to be distasteful, had left the château
immediately upon her return. Ever of a devout mind, she had repaired
to a convent and announced her intention of devoting herself, and her
not inconsiderable fortune, to a higher and more spiritual life.
Charles, who at that period of his lofty estates himself hesitated
between the monastery and the court, applauded her resolution, to which
the king perfunctorily and but half-heartedly responded.
Shortly after, the emperor, fatigued by his journey, begged leave to
retire to his apartments, whither he went, accompanied by his "brother
of France" and followed by his attendants. At the door Francis, with
many expressions of good will, took leave of his royal guest for the
time being, and, turning, encountered the Duke of Friedwald.
Francis, himself once accustomed to assume the disguise of an archer of
the royal guard the better to pursue his love follies among the people,
now gazed curiously upon one who had befooled the entire court.
"You took your departure, my Lord," said the king, quietly, "without
waiting for the order of your going."
"He who enacts the fool, your Majesty, without patent to office must
needs have good legs," replied the young man. "Else will he have his
fingers burnt."
"Only his fingers?" returned the monarch with a smile, somewhat
sardonic.
"Truly," thought the other, as Francis strode away, "the king regrets
the fool's escape from Notre Dame and the fagots."
During the next day Charles called first for his leech and then for a
priest, but whether the former or the latter, or both, temporarily
assuaged the restlessness of mortal disease, that night he was enabled
to be present at the character dances given in his honor by the ladies
of the court in the great gallery of the château.
At a signal from the cornet, gitterns, violas and pipes began to play,
and Francis and his august guest, accompanied by Queen Eleanor, and the
emperor's sister, Marguerite of Navarre, entered the hall, followed by
the dauphin and Catharine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers, the Duchesse
d'Etampes; marshal, chancellor and others of the king's friends and
counselors; courtiers, poets, jesters, philosophers; a goodly company,
such as few monarchs could summon at their beck and call. Charles' eye
lighted; even his austere nature momentarily kindled amid that
brilliant spectacle; Francis' palace of pleasure was an intoxicating
antidote to spleen or hypochondria. And when the court ladies, in a
dazzling band, appeared in the dance, led by the Duchesse d'Etampes, he
openly expressed his approval.
"Ah, Madam," he said to the Queen of Navarre, "there is little of the
monastery about our good brother's court."
"Did your Majesty expect we should cloister you?" she answered, with a
lively glance.
He gazed meditatively upon the "Rose of Valois," or the "Pearl of the
Valois," as she was sometimes called; then a shadow fell upon him; the
futility of ambition; the emptiness of pleasure. In scanty attire, the
Duchesse d'Etampes, with the king, flashed before him; the former, all
beauty, all grace, her little feet trampling down care, so lightly.
Somberly he watched her, and sighed. Mentally he compared himself to
Francis; they had traveled the road of life together, discarding their
youth at the same turn of the highway; yet here was his French brother,
indefatigable in the pursuit of merriment, while his own soul sang
_miséréré_ to the tune of Francis' fiddles. Yet, had he overheard the
conversation of the favorite and the king, the emperor's moodiness
would not, perhaps, have been unmixed with a stronger feeling.
"Sire," the duchess was saying in her most persuasive manner, "while
you have Charles--once your keeper--in your power, here in the château,
you will surely punish him for the past and avenge yourself? You will
make him revoke the treaty of Madrid, or shut him up in one of Louis
XI's oubliettes?"
"I will persuade him if I can," replied the king coldly, "but never
force him. My honor, Madam, is dearer to me than my interests."
The favorite said no more of a cherished project, knowing Francis'
temper and his stubbornness when crossed. She merely shrugged her
white shoulders and watched him closely. The monarch had not scrupled
once to break his covenant with Charles, holding that treaties made
under duress, by _force majeure_, were legally void, while now-- But
the king was composed of contradictions, or--was her own influence
waning?
She had observed a new expression cross his countenance when in the
retinue of the emperor he had noted the daughter of the constable; such
a tenderness as she remembered at Bayonne when the king had looked upon
her, the duchess, for the first time. When she next spoke her words
were the outcome of this train of thought.
"To think the jestress, Jacqueline, should turn out the daughter of
that traitor, the Constable of Dubrois," she observed, keenly.
"A traitor, certainly," said Francis, "but also a brave man. Perhaps
we pressed him too hard," he added retrospectively. "We were young in
years and hot-tempered."
"Your Majesty remembers the girl--a dark-browed, bold creature?"
remarked the duchess, smiling amiably.
"Dark-browed, perhaps, Madam; but I observed nothing bold in her
demeanor," answered the king.
"What! a jestress and not bold! A girl who frequented Fools' hall; who
ran away from court with the _plaisant_!" She glanced at him
mischievously, like a wilful child, but before his frown the smile
faded; involuntarily she clenched her hands.
"Madam," he replied cynically, "I have always noticed that women are
poor judges of their own sex."
And conducting her to a seat, he raised her jeweled fingers
perfunctorily to his lips, and, wheeling abruptly, left her.
"Ah!" thought Triboulet, ominously, who had been closely observing
them, "the king is much displeased."
Had the duchess observed the monarch's lack of warmth? At any rate,
somewhat perplexedly she regarded the departing figure of the king;
then humming lightly, turned to a mirror to adjust a ringlet which had
fallen from the golden net binding her tresses.
"_Mère de Dieu_! woman never held man--or king--by sighing," she
thought, and laughed, remembering the Countess of Châteaubriant; a
veritable Niobe when the monarch had sent her home.
But Triboulet drew a wry face; his little heart was beating
tremulously; dark shadows crossed his mind. Two portentous stars had
appeared in the horoscope of his destiny: he who had been the foreign
fool; she who was the daughter of the constable. Almost fiercely the
hunchback surveyed the beautiful woman before him. With her downfall
would come his own, and he believed the king had wearied of her. How
hateful was her fair face to him at that moment! Already in
imagination he experienced the bitterness of the fall from his high
estates, and shudderingly looked back to his own lowly beginning: a
beggarly street-player of bagpipes; ragged, wretched, importuning
passers-by for coppers; reviled by every urchin. But she, meeting his
glance and reading his thought, only clapped her hands recklessly.
"How unhappy you look," she said.
"Madam, do you think the duke--" he began.
"I think he will cut off your head," she exclaimed, and Triboulet
turned yellow; but a few moments later took heart, the duchess was so
lightsome.
"By my sword--if I had one--our jestress has made a triumphant return,"
commented Caillette as he stood with the Duke of Friedwald near one of
the windows, surveying the animated scene. "Already are some of the
ladies jealous as Barbary pigeons. Her appearance has been remarked by
the Duc de Montrin and other gentlemen in attendance, and--look! Now
the great De Guise approaches her. Here one belongs to everybody."
The other did not answer and Caillette glanced quickly at him. "You
will not think me over-bold," he went on, after a moment's hesitation,
"if I mention what is being whispered--by them?" including in a look
and the uplifting of his eyebrows the entire court. The duke laid his
hand warmly on the shoulder of the poet-fool. "Is there not that
between us which precludes the question?"
"I should not venture to speak about it," continued Caillette, meeting
the duke's gaze frankly, "but that you once honored me with your
confidence. That I was much puzzled when I met you and--our erstwhile
jestress--matters not. 'Twas for me to dismiss my wonderment, and not
strive to reconcile my neighbor's affairs. But when I hear every one
talking about my--friend, it is no gossip's task to come to him with
the unburdening of the prattle."
"What are they saying, Caillette?" asked the duke, in his eyes a darker
look.
"That you would wed this maid, but that the king will use his friendly
offices with Charles to prevent it."
"And do they say why Francis will so use his influence?" continued the
other.
"Because of the claim such a union might give an alien house to a vast
estate in France; the confiscated property of the Constable of Dubrois.
And--but the other reason is but babble, malice--what you will." And
Caillette's manner quickly changed from grave to frivolous. "Now, _au
revoir_; I'm off to Fools' hall," he concluded. "Whenever it becomes
dull for you, seek some of your old comrades there." And laughing,
Caillette disappeared.
Thoughtfully the duke continued to observe the jestress. Between them
whirled the votaries of pleasure; before him swept the fragrance of
delicate perfumes; in his ears sounded the subtile enticement of soft
laughter. Her face wore a proud, self-reliant expression; her eyes
that look which had made her seem so illusive from the inception of
their acquaintance. And now, since his identity had been revealed, she
had seemed more puzzling to him than ever. When he had sought her
glance, her look had told him nothing. It was as though with the
doffing of the motley she had discarded its recollections. In a
tentative mood, he had striven to fathom her, but found himself at a
loss. She had been neither reserved, nor had she avoided him; to her
the past seemed a page, lightly read and turned. Had Caillette truly
said "now she belonged to the world"?
Stepping upon one of the balconies overlooking the valley, the duke
gazed out over the tranquil face of nature, his figure drawn aside from
the flood of light within. Between heaven and earth, the château
reared its stately pile, and far downward those twinkling flashes
represented the town; yonder faint line, like a dark thread, the
encircling wall. Above the gate shone a glimmer from the narrow
casement of some officer's quarters; and the jester's misgivings when
they had ridden beneath the portcullis into the town for the first
time, recurred to him; also, the glad haste with which they had sped
away.
Memories of dangers, of the free and untrammeled character of their
wandering, that day-to-day intimacy, and night-to-night consciousness
of her presence haunted him. Her loyalty, her fine sense of
comradeship, her inherent tenderness, had been revealed to him. Still
he seemed to feel himself the jester, in the gathering of fools, and
she a _ministralissa_, with dark, deep eyes that baffled him.
The sound of voices near the window aroused him from this field of
speculation, voices that abruptly riveted his attention and held it:
the king's and Jacqueline's.