"Rest! I have rested till I am weary of resting. If that is all you have to tell me, you can return whence you came and ask the archduke, my father, if all these years have made him forget that he should love his daughter, and if he believes that she cares not at all for him?"
The little princess did not weep, as she was inclined to do in her disappointment, but her cheeks were flushed and her lips quivered with emotion.
For answer, the stranger strode into the room and, picking up the little maiden bodily in his arms, he kissed her lips, her brow, her hair, and her eyelids a dozen times, for he must have thought, as did Le Glorieux, that her eyes were like those of Mary of Burgundy.
"Oh!" gasped the child, but she did not struggle, for she now realized that this could be no other than her father, the Archduke of Austria.
"I had thought to have kept my identity a secret a little longer, but the glance of those eyes overcame me, quite," murmured Maximilian, while Le Glorieux whispered to Antoine, "Although I am a fool, there are moments and places when and where I feel that my presence is not absolutely necessary, and this is one of them. She will not blame us if we go without her permission, and our room just now is better than our company, so let us go." And unnoticed they slipped away.
Later when the jester saw the archduke he was clothed as became his rank, in velvet trimmed in fur, while gems flashed in the chain about his neck and on his fingers.
"My father," said the princess, who clung to his hand as if she feared he suddenly would vanish from her sight, "this is my jester, Le Glorieux. He once lived at the court of Burgundy. He loved my mother and he loves me; he was given to me by the Lady Anne of Brittany."
"She took your husband and gave you her fool," replied the archduke.
"And who shall say it was not a good exchange?" asked Le Glorieux quickly. "Some of the women who have married into the royal house of France have secured both king and fool in one."
Maximilian laughed. "I see you have a ready wit," said he. "I now remember to have observed you when I stood at the door of the princess' apartments. Did you suspect who I was, Fool?"