"AS is the race of leaves so is that of man." And a great man budded
unnoticed in a tailor's house at Rotterdam this year, and a large man
dropped to earth with great éclat.
Philip Duke of Burgundy, Earl of Holland, etc., etc., lay sick at
Bruges. Now paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased: but woe
betided the rich in an age when, for one Mr. Malady killed, three fell
by Dr. Remedy.
The duke's complaint, nameless then, is now diphtheria. It is, and was,
a very weakening malady, and the duke was old; so altogether Dr. Remedy
bled him.
The duke turned very cold: wonderful!
Then Dr. Remedy had recourse to the arcana of science.
"Ho! This is grave. Flay me an ape incontinent, and clap him to the
duke's breast!"
Officers of state ran septemvious, seeking an ape to counteract the
bloodthirsty tomfoolery of the human species.
Perdition! The duke was out of apes. There were buffaloes, lizards,
Turks, leopards; any unreasonable beast but the right one.
"Why, there used to be an ape about," said one. "If I stand here I saw
him."
So there used; but the mastiff had mangled the sprightly creature for
stealing his supper: and so fulfilled the human precept, "Soyez de votre
siècle!"
In this emergency the seneschal cast his despairing eyes around; and not
in vain. A hopeful light shot into them.
"Here is _this_," said he, sotto voce. "Surely _this_ will serve; 'tis
altogether apelike, doublet and hose apart."
"Nay," said the chancellor, peevishly, "the Princess Marie would hang
us. She doteth on _this_."
Now _this_ was our friend Giles, strutting, all unconscious, in cloth of
gold.
Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog.
"A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour."
So they flayed a liver-coloured dog, and clapped it, yet palpitating, to
their sovereign's breast: and he died.
Philip the Good, thus scientifically disposed of, left thirty-one
children: of whom one, somehow or another, was legitimate; and reigned
in his stead.
The good duke provided for nineteen out of the other thirty; the rest
shifted for themselves.
According to the Flemish chronicle the deceased prince was descended
from the kings of Troy through Thierry of Aquitaine, and Chilperic,
Pharamond, &c., the old kings of Franconia.
But this in reality was no distinction. Not a prince of his day have I
been able to discover who did not come down from Troy. "Priam" was
mediæval for "Adam."
The good duke's body was carried into Burgundy, and laid in a noble
mausoleum of black marble at Dijon.
Holland rang with his death; and little dreamed that anything as famous
was born in her territory that year. That judgment has been long
reversed. Men gaze at the tailor's house, where the great birth of the
fifteenth century took place. In what house the good duke died "no one
knows and no one cares," as the song says.
And why?
Dukes Philip the Good come and go, and leave mankind not a halfpenny
wiser, nor better, nor other, than they found it. But when, once in
three hundred years, such a child is born to the world as Margaret's
son, lo! a human torch lighted by fire from heaven; and "FIAT LUX"
thunders from pole to pole.