"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."
It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages were revived:
"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."
The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs and length, all speed, no strength:
"They should have set him on red Berold,
Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"
Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.
"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady in time of spring.
—Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"
Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:
"And so we saw the lady arrive;
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of Nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her."