"Beshrew him!" they answered, of one accord. "A plague upon him!"
And slowly the fool and the soldiers began to retrace their way across the moon-lit fields, the trooper with the red mustaches grumbling as they went: "Such luck to turn back now, with all those mad-caps right under our nose! A curse to a dry march over a dusty meadow! An unsanctified dog of a monk! 'Tis like a campaign, with naught but ditch water to drink. The devil take the friar and the jester! Forward! the fool in the center, and those he would have fooled around him!"
And when they disappeared in the distance the gipsy woman might have been seen leaving the house by the stable door and leading in the horse.
CHAPTER XI
A NEW MESSENGER TO THE EMPEROR
Between Caillette and the duke's jester had arisen one of those friendships which spring more from similitude than unlikeness; an amity of which each had been unconscious in its inception, but which had gradually grown into a sentiment of comradeship. Caillette was of noble mien, graceful manner and elegant address; a soldier by preference; a jester against his will, forced to the office by the nobleman who had cared for and educated him. In the duke's fool he had found his other self; a man who like himself lent dignity to the gentle art of jesting; who could turn a rhyme and raise a laugh without resorting to grossness.
The line of demarcation between the clown and the merry-and-wise wit was, in those days, not clearly drawn. The stories of the former, which made the matrons look down and the maidens to hide their faces, were often more appreciated by the inebriate nobles than some subtile comicality or nimble lines of poetry, that would serve to take home and think over, and which improved with time like a wine of sound body. Triboulet abused the ancient art of foolery, thought Caillette; the duke's plaisant played upon it with true drollery, and as a master who has a delicate ear for an instrument, so Caillette, being sensitive to broadness or stupidity which masked as humor or pleasantry, turned naturally from the mountebank to the true jester.
Moreover, Caillette experienced a superior sadness, sifted through years of infestivity and gloom, beginning when Diane was led to the altar by the grand seneschal of Normandy, that threw an actual, albeit cynical, interest about the love-tragedy of the duke's fool which the other divined and—from his own past heart-throbs—understood. The plaisant to the princess' betrothed, Caillette would have sworn, was of gentle birth; his face, manner and bearing proclaimed it; he was, also, a scholar and a poet; his courage, which Caillette divined, fitted him for the higher office of arms. Certainly, he became an interesting companion, and the French jester sought his company on every occasion. And this fellowship, or intimacy, which he courted was destined to send Caillette forth on a strange and adventuresome mission.
The day following the return of the duke's fool to the castle, Francis, who early in his reign had sought to model his life after the chivalrous romances, inaugurated a splendid and pompous tournament. Some time before, the pursuivants had proclaimed the event and distributed to the knights who were to take active part the shields of arms of the four juges-diseurs, or umpires of the field. On this gala occasion the scaffolds and stands surrounding the arena were bedecked in silks of bright colors; against the cloudless sky a thousand festal flags waved and fluttered in the gentle breeze; beneath the tasseled awning festoons of bright flowers embellished gorgeous hangings and tapestries.