THE FAVORITE IS ALARMED
Thus it befell that both Robert of Friedwald and Jacqueline accompanied the emperor to the little town, the scene of their late adventures, and that they who had been fool and joculatrix rode once more through the street they had ne'er expected to see again. The flags were flying; cannon boomed; they advanced beneath wreaths of roses, the way paved with flowers. Standing at the door of his inn, the landlord dropped his jaw in amazement as his glance fell upon the jestress and her companion behind the great emperor himself. His surprise, too, was abruptly voiced by a ragged, wayworn person not far distant in the crowd, whose fingers had been busy about the pockets of his neighbors; fingers which had a deft habit of working by themselves, while his eyes were bent elsewhere and his lips joined in the general acclaim; fingers which like antennas seemed to have a special intelligence of their own. Now those long weapons of abstraction and appropriation ceased their deft work; he became all eyes.
"Good lack! Who may the noble gentleman behind the emperor be?" he exclaimed. "Surely 'tis the duke's fool."
"And ride with the emperor?" said a burly citizen at his elbow. "'Tis thou who art the fool."
"Truly I think so," answered the other. "I see; believe; but may not understand."
At that moment the duke's gaze in passing chanced to rest upon the pinched and over-curious face of the scamp-student; a gleam of recollection shone in his glance. "Gladius gemmatus!" cried the scholar, and a smile on the noble's countenance told him he had heard. Turning the problem in his mind, the vagrant-philosopher forgot about pilfering and the procession itself, when a soldier touched him roughly on the shoulder.
"Are you the scamp-student?" said the trooper.
"Now they'll hang me with these spoils in my pockets," thought the scholar. But as bravely as might be, he replied: "The former I am; the latter I would be."
"Then the Duke of Friedwald sent me to give you this purse," remarked the man, suiting the action to the word. "He bade me say 'tis to take the place of a bit of silver you once did not earn." And the trooper vanished.
"Well-a-day!" commented the burly citizen, regarding the gold pieces and the philosopher in wonderment of his own. "You may be a fool, but you must be an honest knave."