"Why," he cried, "here's a different complication!"
And stooping suddenly, he grasped the stool from the floor and brought it down with crushing force upon the plaisant's head. A cowardly, brutal blow; and at once the prisoner's grasp relaxed, and he lay motionless in the arms of the warder, who placed him on the straw.
"I think the knave's dead, my Lord," remarked the man, panting from his exertion.
"That makes the comedy only the stronger," replied the free baron curtly, as he knelt by the side of the prostrate figure and thrust his hand under the torn doublet. Having procured possession of the object which chance had revealed to him, he arose and, without further word, left the cell.
CHAPTER XVI
TIDINGS FROM THE COURT
When Brusquet, the jester, fled from the camp at Avignon, where he had presumed to practise medicine, to the detriment of the army, some one said: "Fools and cats have nine lives," and the revised proverb had been accepted at court. It was this saying the turnkey muttered when he bent over the prostrate figure of the duke's plaisant after the free baron had departed. Thus one of the fabled sources of existence was left the fool, and again it seemed the proverb would be realized.
Day after day passed, and still the vital spark burned; perhaps it wavered, but in this extremity the jester had not been entirely neglected; but who had befriended him, assisting the spirit and the flesh to maintain their unification, he did not learn until some time later. Youth and a strong constitution were also a shield against the final change, and when he began to mend, and his heart-beats grew stronger, even the jailer, his erstwhile assailant, the most callous of his several keepers, exhibited a stony interest in this unusual convalescence.
The touch of a hand was the plaisant's first impression of returning consciousness, and then into his throbbing brain crept the outlines of the prison walls and the small window that grudgingly admitted the light. To his confused thoughts these surroundings recalled the struggle with the free baron and the jailer. As across a dark chasm, he saw the face of the false duke, whereon wonder and conviction had given way to brutal rage, and, with the memory of that treacherous blow, the fool half-started from his couch.