Now Philip the Good was good only just as Nicholas the Czar was “good.” He had a fair face and a black heart. Philip, like Nicholas, joined an outward display of conjugal decency with some private but very crapulous indecency; and the Duke, like the Czar, was the appalling liar of his day. Philip had increased the ducal territory of Burgundy by such means as secured Finland to Muscovy, by treachery of the most fiendish quality; and in 1442, affecting to think that Luxembourg was in the sick condition which Nicholas described as the condition of Turkey—when the imperial felon thought he was making a confederate of Sir Hamilton Seymour, the Duke resolved to seize on the territory in question, and young Jacques de Lelaing was in an ecstacy of delight at being permitted to join in this most rascally of expeditions.
Within a year, desolation was spread throughout a wide district. Fire and sword did their devastating work, and the earth was swept of the crops, dwellings, and human beings, which lay between the invaders and Luxembourg. The city was ultimately taken by surprise, and the good Philip delivered it up to pillage; then ensued a scene which hell itself could not equal; and the Duke and his followers having enacted horrors from which devils would have recoiled, they returned to Brussels, where they were received with ten times more delight than if they had come back from an expedition which had been undertaken for the benefit of humanity.
What was called peace now followed, and Jacques de Lelaing, having fleshed his maiden sword, and gained the praise of brave men, and the love of fair women, resolved to commence a series of provincial excursions for his own especial benefit. As, in modern times, professors without scholars, and actors without engagements, wander from town to town, and give lectures at “the King’s Arms,” so Jacques de Lelaing went forth upon his way, offering to fight all comers, in presence of kings themselves.
His first appearance on this provincial tour was at Nancy, in 1445, where a brilliant French Court was holding joyous festival while awaiting the coming of Suffolk, who was commissioned to escort to England a royal bride, in the person of Margaret of Anjou. The French knights made light of the soldier of Burgundy; but Jacques, when announcing that he was the holder of the tournament, added that no French knight should unhorse him, unless God and his good lady decreed otherwise.
The latter was not likely, and he felt himself secure, doubly so, for he rode into the lists decorated with favors, gold embroidery, and rich jewels, the gifts of the Duchesses of Orleans and Calabria, each of whom fondly believed that she was the sole fair one by whose bright eyes Jacques de Lelaing swore his prettiest oath. Accordingly, there was not a cavalier who rode against him in that passage of arms, who left the field otherwise than with broken or bruised bones. “What manner of man will this be?” cried they, “if, even as a lad, he lays on so lustily?”
The lad, at the subsequent banquet, to which he was borne in triumph, again proved that he had the capacity of a man. He was fresh as a rose just blown; gay as a lark in early spring. The queens of France and Sicily conversed with him by the half hour, while ladies of lower degree gazed at him till they sighed; and sighed, knowing full well why, and caring very much, wherefore. Charles VII. too, treated him with especial distinction, and conferred on him the rich prizes he had won as victor in the rough tourney of the day. But there were other guerdons awarded him that night, which he more highly prized. Jacques visited the Duchess of Orleans in her bower, and carried away with him, on leaving, the richest diamond she had to bestow. He then passed to the pavilion of the Duchess of Calabria, a lady who, among other gifts willingly made by her, placed upon his finger a brilliant ruby set in a gorgeous gold ring. He went to his own bed that night as impudently happy as a modern Lifeguardsman who is successfully fooling two ladies’ maids. His cleric had left him, and Jacques had ceased to care for the keeping-up of his Latin, except, perhaps, the conjugation of the imperative mood of amo. “Amemus,” let us love, was the favorite part of the mood, and the most frequently repeated by him and his brace of duchesses.
Sometime after this very successful first appearance, and toward the end of 1445, our doughty squire was traversing the cathedral of Notre Dame of Antwerp, and was on the point of cursing the singers for their bad voices, just as one might be almost justified in doing now, so execrable are they; he was there and thus engaged, when a Sicilian knight, named Bonifazio, came jingling his spurs along the transept, and looking jauntingly and impertinently as he passed by. Jacques looked boldly at this “pretty fellow” of the time, and remarked that he wore a golden fetter ring on his left leg, held up by a chain of the same metal fastened to a circlet above his knee. His shield bore the device, “Who has fair lady, let him look to her well!” “It’s an impertinent device,” said Jacques, touching the shield, by way of token that he would fight the bearer for carrying it. “Thou art but a poor squire, albeit a bold man,” said the Sicilian, with the air of one who was half inclined to chastise the Hainaulter for his insolence. Toison d’Or, the herald, whispered in the ear of the Hainaulter; thereupon, Jacques exclaimed, “If my master, Duke Philip, will give me permission to fight, thou darest not deny me, on his Grace’s territory.” Bonifazio bowed by way of assent. The permission was gained, and the encounter came off at Ghent. The first day’s combat was a species of preliminary struggle on horseback, in which Jacques showed himself so worthy of the spurs he did not yet wear, that Philip fastened them to his heels the next day, and dubbed him Knight in solemn form. As the combatants strode into the lists, on the second day, the Duke of Orleans remarked to his Duchess, that Jacques was not so “gent as the Sicilian.” The Duchess smiled, as Guinever smiled when she looked on Sir Launcelot, while her husband, King Arthur, commented upon him; and she said, in phrase known to all who read Spenser, “he loves a lady gent;” and she added, with more of the smile and less of the blush, “he is a better man than the Sicilian, and, to my thinking, he will this day prove it.”
“We shall see,” remarked the Duke carelessly.
“We shall see,” re-echoed the Duchess, with the sunniest of smiles.
Jacques, like the chivalric “gent” that he was, did honor to the testimony of the Duchess. The combatants went at it, like stout men. Jacques belabored his antagonist with a staff, the Sicilian answered by thrusting a javelin at his adversary’s uncovered face. They then flung away their arms and their shields, and hewed at each other with their battle-axes. Having spoiled the edges of these, and loosened them from their handles, by battering at each other’s skulls, they finally drew their lusty and well-tempered swords, and fought so fiercely that the gleaming of their swiftly manœuvred blades made them seem as if they were smiting each other with lightning. Jacques had well-nigh dealt a mortal thrust at the Sicilian, when, at the intervention of the Duke of Orleans, Philip the Good flung his truncheon into the lists, and so saved the foreign knight, by ending the fray. The Duchess reproved her consort for being over-intrusive, but she smiled more gleesomely than before. “Whither away, Sir Jacques?” asked she, as the latter modestly bowed on passing her—the multitude the while rending the welkin with their approving shout. “To the chapel in the wood,” replied Jacques, “to render thanks for the aid vouchsafed to me by our Lady.” “Marry,” murmured the Duchess, “we will be there too.” She thought it not less edifying to see knight at his devotions than at beholding him in the duello. “I am grateful to the Lady of Good Succor,” said Jacques. “And thou doest right loyally,” was the comment of the Duchess.