"What! a jestress and not bold! A girl who frequented Fools' hall; who ran away from court with the plaisant!" She glanced at him mischievously, like a wilful child, but before his frown the smile faded; involuntarily she clenched her hands.
"Madam," he replied cynically, "I have always noticed that women are poor judges of their own sex."
And conducting her to a seat, he raised her jeweled fingers perfunctorily to his lips, and, wheeling abruptly, left her.
"Ah!" thought Triboulet, ominously, who had been closely observing them, "the king is much displeased."
Had the duchess observed the monarch's lack of warmth? At any rate, somewhat perplexedly she regarded the departing figure of the king; then humming lightly, turned to a mirror to adjust a ringlet which had fallen from the golden net binding her tresses.
"Mère de Dieu! woman never held man—or king—by sighing," she thought, and laughed, remembering the Countess of Châteaubriant; a veritable Niobe when the monarch had sent her home.
But Triboulet drew a wry face; his little heart was beating tremulously; dark shadows crossed his mind. Two portentous stars had appeared in the horoscope of his destiny: he who had been the foreign fool; she who was the daughter of the constable. Almost fiercely the hunchback surveyed the beautiful woman before him. With her downfall would come his own, and he believed the king had wearied of her. How hateful was her fair face to him at that moment! Already in imagination he experienced the bitterness of the fall from his high estates, and shudderingly looked back to his own lowly beginning: a beggarly street-player of bagpipes; ragged, wretched, importuning passers-by for coppers; reviled by every urchin. But she, meeting his glance and reading his thought, only clapped her hands recklessly.
"How unhappy you look," she said.
"Madam, do you think the duke—" he began.
"I think he will cut off your head," she exclaimed, and Triboulet turned yellow; but a few moments later took heart, the duchess was so lightsome.