CHAPTER XIII
A CHAPLET FOR THE DUKE
Loud rang encomium and blessing on the king, as the people that night crowded in the rear courtyard around the great tables set in the open air, and groaning beneath viands, nutritious and succulent. What swain or yokel had not a meed of praise for the monarch when he beheld this burden of good cheer, and, at the end of each board, elevated a little and garlanded with roses, a rotund and portly cask of wine, with a spigot projecting hospitably tablewards?
Forgotten were the tax-lists under which the commonalty labored; it was "Hosanna" for Francis, and not a plowman nor tiller of the soil bethought himself that he had fully paid for the snack and sup that night. How could he, having had no one to think for him; for then Rousseau had not lived, Voltaire was unborn, and the most daring approach to lese-majesty had been Rabelais' jocose: "The wearers of the crown and scepter are born under the same constellation as those of cap and bells."
Upon the green, smoking torches illumined the people and the surroundings; beneath a great oven, the bright coals cast a vivid glow far and near. Close to the broad face of a cask—round and large like that of a full-fed host presiding at the head of the board—sat the Franciscan monk, whose gluttonous eye wandered from quail to partridge, thence onward to pastry or pie, with the spigot at the end of the orbit of observation. Nor as it made this comprehensive survey did his glance omit a casual inventory of the robust charms of a bouncing maid on the opposite side of the table. Scattered amid the honest, good-natured visages of the trusting peasants were the pinched adventurers from Paris, the dwellers of that quarter sacred to themselves. Yonder plump, frisky dame seemed like the lamb; the gaunt knave by her side, the wolf.
At length the company could eat no more, although there yet remained a void for drinking, and as the cups went circling and circling, their laughter mingled with the distant strains of music from the great, gorgeously lighted pavilion, where the king and his guests were assembled to close the tourney fittingly with the celebration of the final event—the awarding of the prize for the day.
"Can you tell me, good sir, to whom the umpires of the field have given their judgment?" said a townsman to his country neighbor.
"Did you not hear the king of arms decide the Duke of Friedwald was the victor?" answered the other.
"A decision of courtesy, perhaps?" insinuated the Parisian.
"Nay; two spears he broke, and overcame three adversaries during the day. Fairly he won the award."