The Court Jester.

by Cornelia Baker.

CHAPTER I

LE GLORIEUX HEARS GOOD NEWS

The old d.u.c.h.ess was talking of the past, while behind her chair Le Glorieux was silently and joyously turning handsprings. I wish I might give him another name, for that one is certainly a mouthful, but as he really lived, and that was what he was called, we must manage it as best we can.

You may think, and with reason, that turning handsprings was not a respectful thing to do when a lady, and above all a d.u.c.h.ess, was talking. But Le Glorieux was the court jester, the fool, who when Charles the Bold, son of the d.u.c.h.ess, was living, was wont to make his master laugh. Therefore his conduct and conversation as a rule were not what one could expect of a sedate and dignified member of society.

In the presence of his late master, Le Glorieux could have turned handsprings in plain view, but the dowager d.u.c.h.ess was old and querulous and resented such performances. She was the widow of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and she looked very much like a fairy G.o.dmother in her quaint costume of the time of Charles the Seventh. She had been lady in waiting at the court of the French king, and she still clung to the high headdress, towering some twenty inches above her brow, and its long veil, which seemed to be boiling in filmy folds, like foam, from its pointed top. By her side was an ebony crutch, not for the purpose of turning pumpkins into coaches for the convenience of neglected Cinderellas, but to support the weight of the owner when she cared to move about; for rheumatism, which was up and doing even so long ago as the fifteenth century, had no more respect for a d.u.c.h.ess than for a scullery maid, and had spitefully attacked her Grace of Burgundy.

The windows were veiled by heavy curtains that excluded the sunshine, and the only light in the long dim room came from the brazier at the feet of the d.u.c.h.ess, who required artificial heat even in this warm autumn weather. Outside--Le Glorieux knew--the birds were singing and the b.u.t.terflies were dipping in and out among the roses nodding in the soft breeze; but to-day the beauties of nature did not attract him so strongly as did the unusual degree of excitement going on in the castle.

The Lady Clotilde had been sent for by her cousin, the young d.u.c.h.ess Anne of Brittany, and so, bag and baggage and servants, she was to set out on the following morning. Throughout the castle was felt the buzz and bustle of preparation, maids running in and out, and pages spinning up and down the staircases, for the Lady Clotilde liked to keep everybody busy. Le Glorieux longed to see what was going on, for, though a grown man, he possessed the heart of a rollicking boy and was highly entertained by a hubbub.

There had been plenty of diversion while Charles the Bold was living, a fact of which you will be convinced when you read your history of France, and he had once taken Le Glorieux with him to the wars, where the latter had shown himself to be brave and fearless, and when Charles was not planning campaigns against the neighboring countries, or engaged in carrying out his plans, he liked, while sipping the red or the white wine of his province, to listen to the drolleries of his jester. In those days, you see, there were no newspapers, no printed jokes, and it was necessary for even a fierce and warlike duke to laugh at times. But after the duke's death n.o.body cared much for the jester's jokes, and his princ.i.p.al duty seemed to be to listen to the dowager d.u.c.h.ess talk, and as she was in the habit of repeating the same story a good many times a day, her conversation was usually extremely wearisome.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I remember it well"]

"Yes," said she, holding her wax-like hands out to the brazier and rubbing them thoughtfully, "I remember it as well as if it had happened yesterday. I do not know whether I ever mentioned to you, Le Glorieux, that I was lady in waiting to her Highness, Marguerite of Scotland, then Dauphiness of France?"

With the agility of a cat the jester, who at this moment was standing on his head, regained his feet and stood respectfully before her Grace.

"Never, Cousin," replied he gravely; "or at least not more than five thousand times."

"I thought not," she returned, for being somewhat deaf she had not caught the latter part of the sentence. "Yes, I was in the train of that dear and beauteous lady whom I loved so much that I still wear the costume chosen by her, this cap and veil and these shoes."

The old lady thrust out a foot shod in a shoe having a sharp point as long again as her foot, remarking contentedly, "This is a fine style of a shoe, do you not think so, Le Glorieux?"

"Yes, Cousin, and one calculated to encourage an ambitious great toe that is anxious to keep on growing," replied the fool, whose own shoes were pointed, but in a style far less exaggerated than those of her Grace.

"As I was saying," she went on, "I remember it as well as if it had happened yesterday. The dauphiness was fond of learning, and she composed verses of no small merit. I too caught the contagion and composed verses. I wish that I could remember some of them to repeat to you."

"Do not trouble yourself, Cousin," said the jester hastily; "I am nothing but a fool, you know, and I must deny myself many pleasures."

"At the court," she resumed, "lived at the time the great poet Alain Chartier, who was a wonderfully gifted man, though very plain. One day when the dauphiness and her ladies--I was among them, Le Glorieux--were crossing the courtyard we found Alain Chartier asleep on a bench. Much to our surprise her Highness gathered up her long train so that its rustle would not awaken him, and tripping softly toward the sleeping poet she kissed him on the lips. Yes, Le Glorieux, that great princess consort of the dauphin--afterward Louis the Eleventh--deigned to kiss a humble poet with her own lips! Was it not wonderful?"

"Not so wonderful as if she had tried to kiss him with somebody else's lips," replied the fool, adding, "but it was unfair to Chartier."

"Why unfair?"

"Because she had no right to take him unawares and unarmed."

Her Grace frowned darkly as she replied, "Le Glorieux, you are nothing but a fool and you can not understand what an honor it was for a humble poet to be kissed by a great princess. But one of the courtiers said, 'Madame, why did you kiss that extremely unprepossessing man?' The dauphiness replied, 'I did not kiss the man----'"

"How could she say that," broke in the jester, "when you all saw her do it?"

"Do not interrupt me, Fool. The dauphiness said, 'I did not kiss the man----'"

"That is what you said before," interrupted the fool again, "and I say she must have been a very silly little woman."

"Fool, do you not know that you are daring to criticise a princess of Scotland, daughter of James the Second of that country?"

"I do not care if she was the daughter of his present Majesty, Henry the Seventh of England; it was foolish of her to try to make people doubt the evidence of their own eyes."

"Will you let me finish, you great gawk?" Then raising her voice and speaking very rapidly the d.u.c.h.ess went on, "The dauphiness said, 'I did not kiss the man, but that precious mouth from which has come so many n.o.ble and virtuous words.'"

"I call that a very slipshod way to get out of it," replied the fool.

"Let us take an example. Suppose I had gone to the court of France and had cut off the late king's head. The soldiers arrest me and I say, 'I did not kill the man, I simply sliced off that head which has hatched up so many horrible schemes.' Would they apologize and let me go? Not a bit of it!"

"But this, you see, was figurative."

"I do not care what you call it. She kissed his lips, did she not?"

"Yes."

"And was not the man behind them at the time?"

"Of course, but you see----"

"Then there is nothing more to say about it," went on the fool.

The d.u.c.h.ess reflected seriously for a moment and then seemed to arrive at the conclusion that it would not pay her to continue the argument.

Besides, she was somewhat muddled herself. She continued, "Was it a wonder that so gracious a lady should have been misunderstood at such a court? And she died mysteriously, Le Glorieux, when she was but one-and-twenty, and in her illness she said, 'Fie upon this life; let no one talk more of it to me!'"

"I am not surprised that she felt that way," said the jester. "Now that Louis is dead, they say that he was not cruel, but firm. For my part, I do not like the kind of firmness that wants to hang or drown half the people in the kingdom, though it may be that I am too particular."

"Yes, I remember that day as well as if it had been yesterday," went on the d.u.c.h.ess, with her dull eyes fixed dreamily upon the red coals of the brazier, and the fool again glided behind her chair and resumed the handsprings.

At last, attracted in the midst of her recollections by the incessant ringing of the little bells on the jester's cap, which his lively motions kept a-tinkle, the old lady craned her neck and glancing behind her chair caught him in the very act of standing on his head!

Indignant at his inattention and forgetting the license accorded court fools, she seized her crutch and hit him a swift rap across the calves of the legs which caused him to reverse himself with a howl.

"How dare you treat me with such disrespect, and not only me, but the gracious princess of whom I was talking!" she cried angrily. "You shall leave the court. I have no need of a fool!" Then a sudden and pleasant thought seemed to come into her mind, for she said, "I know what I will do. I feel that I should send Anne of Brittany a present, and I was going to send her an emerald. I will not part with the gem; I will send you, Le Glorieux, instead, with a letter saying that I am presenting her with the most precious possession of the late Duke of Burgundy, to cheer her in the various trials brought about by the reign of one so young.

Yes, that will be fine, and I shall keep the emerald. You may leave me, Fool, and prepare for your departure while I think over the wording of my letter."

Le Glorieux was so overcome with joy at this sudden and unexpected turn of affairs that he forgot his abused calves, and his feet scarce touched the steps as he mounted to his little tower chamber, for you must know that a fool was a kind of slave, and although having many privileges within the palace, was not allowed to leave it even for a night without special permission.

On the landing of the staircase stood a boy of eleven or twelve years of age, looking sadly out of the mullioned window. He was a pretty youth and he wore a fine suit, to say nothing of a cap with a curling plume, but he did not look happy.

"Cheer up, Antoine," said the jester, slapping him on the back; "better days are in store for me."

"What will your better days avail me?" asked the boy, with a shrug.

"Well answered," said the jester reflectively. "Yet when things are going well with us we are surprised that the world does not smile with us, while we expect it to boohoo when we are sad. But I have been given permission to go to Brittany. Think of that! Try to overcome your indifference, and think what a joy it will be to me to live where I shall no longer hear the story of the princess who kissed the poet. And she has just hit me a blow on the legs that has raised lumps as big as plovers' eggs. Did it with her crutch, too!"