"You lived in the castle, then, when it was the residence of the proud Constable of Dubrois? You must have been but a child," he added, reflectively.
"Yes; but children may have long memories."
"In your case, certainly. How well you knew all the passages and corridors of the castle!"
She responded carelessly and changed the conversation. The thoroughfare broadening, for the remainder of the day they pressed forward side by side. But a single human figure, during all those hours, they encountered, and that when the afternoon had fairly worn away. For some time they had pursued their journey silently, when at a turn in the road the horse of the jester shied and started back.
At the same time an unclean, offensive-looking monk in Franciscan attire arose suddenly out of the stubble by the wayside. In his hand he held a heavy staff, newly cut from the forest, a stock which in his brawny arms seemed better adapted for a weapon than as a prop for his sturdy frame. From the rope girdle about his waist depended a rosary whose great beads would have served the fingers of a Cyclops, and a most diminutive, leathern-bound prayer-book. At the appearance of the fool and his companion, he opened an enormous mouth, and in a voice proportionately large began to whine right vigorously:
"Charity, good people, for the Mother Church! Charity in the name of the Holy Mother! In the name of the saints, the apostles and the evangelists! St. John, St. Peter, St.—" Then broke off suddenly, staring stupidly at the jester.
"The duke's fool!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? A plague upon it! You have as many lives as a monk."
"Call you yourself a monk, rascal?" asked the jester, contemptuously.
"At times. Charity, good fool!" the canting rogue again began to whine, edging nearer. "Charity, mistress! For the sake of the prophets and the disciples! The seven sacraments, the feast of the Pentecost and the Passover! In the name of the holy Fathers! St. Sebastian! St. Michael! St.—"
But the fugitives had already sped on, and the unregenerate knave turned his pious eloquence into an unhallowed channel of oaths, waving his staff menacingly after them.