"No, little Cousin," he returned gravely, and with a shake of the head. "The scrapings you notice on my handsome countenance and on my slender hands are but the result of a weakness with which I was born."
"You were not born with those scratches, or I should have observed them long ago," she replied, smiling.
"I said the result of a weakness, your Highness. It is my nature to want to climb. Whenever I see the side of a rock I am seized with an uncontrollable desire to scale it, and climb I must if the sky falls. I always have found it the most agreeable sensation in the world to be clinging to the side of a rock with nothing over me but the blue of the heavens, and nothing beneath me but the blue of some mountain lake and with a delightful feeling of uncertainty as to just where I am to find my next foothold."
"That is an odd taste indeed," she returned, laughing, "and I do not think there are many who share it with you."
Antoine, I regret to say, was a mischievous youth, as we have seen from the trick he played on his friend the jester when they first started out on their journey together, and it may have been—though of course he would have scorned the suggestion—that some of the raps given him by the old Duchess of Burgundy were not altogether undeserved.
However that may be, he surely did meddle with something at the inn which did not concern him, as you shall presently see. That "something" was a cunning little bear. The innkeeper conducted the jester and the two boys to a rude cage constructed out of the limbs of trees, which he had placed a little distance from the house and near the edge of the forest. Within the cage was a brown bear cub which had been brought to him by a friend. This wild and woolly pet, he said, he was going to train and sell for a good round sum to a traveling mountebank, who would want to exhibit it in the courtyards of inns and before the nobility.
Young Master Bruin was already learning, and one felt that his education would be completed by the time he was full grown. When his master would say "Come," he would obey, and he could stand on his hind feet in a manner that was quite genteel, and he was greatly admired by the three guests of his master, who watched his performances. When replaced in the cage, he walked round and round it, and every time he came to a corner he would bow, as all bears do when caged, but Le Glorieux remarked, "I see that you have begun by teaching him to be polite, and politeness is a great thing in man or beast. There are a good many things we could learn from animals if we would only think about it, though we are so well satisfied with ourselves that we think we are the only living beings in the world who are worth considering. There are not many of us who are as faithful in our friendship as an ordinary dog, and did you ever watch a cat when she had her mind bent on getting a certain mouse? Talk about patience and perseverance! Why, if a man had as much, he could accomplish almost anything he set out to do!"
"I should like to take that little bear out and play with him," remarked Antoine, as the innkeeper walked on ahead with Philibert.
"Just you take my advice, my young friend, and let that bear alone," said the jester, with emphasis. "The owner of the bear will teach him a number of tricks, no doubt, but there is one that he will not be obliged to learn, having been born with it, and that is the art of hugging."
"Pooh!" said Antoine, "a little thing like that could not hurt me. I have played with dogs a good deal larger than that bear."