"That is," added Francis, "if it will amuse her to see you hanged!"
"And if it did not amuse her, Sire?" spoke up the new-comer, without a tremor in his voice.
"What then?" asked the king.
"It would be a breach of hospitality to hang me, the servant of the duke who is servant of Charles V!" he replied boldly.
Francis started. Like a menace shone the arms of the great emperor. Vividly he recalled his own humiliation, his long captivity, and mistrusted the power of his subtile, amiable friend-enemy. Friendship? Sweeter was hatred. But the promptings of wisdom had suggested the policy of peace; the reins of expediency drove him, autocrat or slave, to the doctrines of loving brotherhood. He turned his gloomy eyes upon the glowing countenance of Triboulet.
"What say you, fool?"
"Your Majesty," answered the eager dwarf, "could hang him without breach of hospitality."
"How do you make that good, Triboulet?" asked the monarch.
"The duke has given him to the princess. The princess is a subject of your Majesty. The king of France has jurisdiction over the princess' fool and surely can proceed in so small a matter as hanging him."
Francis bent a malignant look upon the young man. Behind the dwarf stood the jestress, now an earnest spectator of the scene.