"He will do his best," commented the jester, carelessly.
"And man can do no more," retorted the king's guest. "Many a battle has been thus bravely lost."
He had hoped to provoke from the plaisant some further expression of self-content in his plans for the future, but the other had become guarded.
What if he offered the fool clemency? asked the princess' betrothed of himself. If the jester had confidence in the future he would naturally rather remain in the narrow confines of his dark chamber than consider proposals from one whom he believed he would yet overcome. The free baron began to enjoy this strategic duplicity of language; the environing dangers lent zest to equivocation; the seduction of finding himself more potent than forces antagonistic became intoxicating to his egotism.
"Why," he said, patronizingly, surveying the slender figure of the fool, "a good man should die by the sword rather than go to the scaffold. What if I were to overlook Caillette and the rest? He is harmless,"—more shrewdly; "let him go. As for the princess—well, you're young; in the heyday for such nonsense. I have never yet quarreled seriously with man for woman's sake. There are many graver causes for contention—a purse, or a few acres of land; right royal warfare. If I get the king to forgive you, and the princess to overlook your offense, will you well and truthfully serve me?"
"Never!" answered the fool, promptly.
"He is sure the message will reach Charles in Spain," mentally concluded the king's guest. "Yet," he continued aloud in a tone of mockery, "you did not hesitate to betray your master yourself. Why, then, will you not betray him to me?"
"To him I will answer, not to you," returned the jester, calmly.
A contemptuous smile crossed the free baron's face.
"And tell him how you dared look up to his mistress? That you sought to save her from another, while you yourself poured your own burning tale into her ear? Two things I most admire in nature," went on the free baron, with emphasis. "A dare-devil who stops not for man or Satan, and—an honest man. You take but a compromising middle course; and will hang, a hybrid, from some convenient limb."