"Call you it chance?" he said in a low voice, and Nanette nudged him angrily in the side with her elbow, so that he cried out, and attention would have been called to them but for a ripple of laughter which started on the edge of the crowd and was taken up by the serried ranks.
"Ho! ho! Look at Triboulet!" shouted the delighted populace. "Ah, the droll fellow!"
All eyes were now bent to the arena, where, on a powerful nag, sat perched the misshapen jester. With whip and spur he was vehemently plying a horse that stubbornly stood as motionless as carven stone. Thinking at the last moment of a plan for escape from the dangerous features of the tourney, the hunchback had bribed one of the attendants to fetch him a steed which for sullen obduracy surpassed any charger in the king's stables. Fate, he was called, because nothing could move or change him, and now, with head pushed forward and ears thrust back, he proved himself beneath the blows and spurring of the seemingly excited rider, worthy of this appellation.
"Go on, Fate; go on!" exclaimed the apparently angry dwarf. "Will you be balky now, when Triboulet has glory within his grasp? Miserable beast! unhappy fate! When bright eyes are watching the great Triboulet!"
If not destined to score success with his lance, the dwarf at least had won a victory through his comical situation and ready wit. Fair ladies forgot his ugliness; the pages his ill-humor; the courtiers his vindictive slyness; the monarch the disappointment of his failure to worst the duke's fool, and all applauded the ludicrous figure, shouting, waving his arms, struggling with inexorable destiny. Finally, in despair, his hands fell to his side.
"Oh, resistless necessity!" he cried. But in his heart he said: "It is well. I am as safe as on a wooden horse. Here I stand. Let others have their heads split or their bodies broken. Triboulet, like the gods, views the carnage from afar."
While this bit of unexpected comedy riveted the attention of the spectators the duke and his followers had slowly ridden to their side of the inclosure. Here hovered the squires, adjusting a stirrup, giving a last turn to a strap, or testing a bridle or girth. Behind stood the heralds, trumpeters and pursuivants in their bright garb of office. At his own solicitation had the duke been assigned an active part in the day's entertainment. The king, fearing for the safety of his guest and the possible postponement of the marriage should any injury befall him, had sought to dissuade him from his purpose, but the other had laughed boisterously at the monarch's fears and sworn he would break a lance for his lady love that day. Francis, too gallant a knight himself to interpose further objection to an announcement so in keeping with the traditions of the lists, thereupon had ordered the best charger in his stables to be placed at the disposal of the princess' betrothed, and again nodded his approbation upon the appearance of the duke in the ring. But at least one person in that vast assemblage was far from sharing the monarch's complaisant mood.
If the mind of the duke's fool had heretofore been filled with bitterness upon witnessing festal honors to a mere presumptuous free baron, what now were his emotions at the reception accorded him? From king to churl was he a gallant noble; he, a swaggerer, ill-born, a terrorist of mountain passes. Even as the irony of the demonstration swept over the jester, from above fell a flower, white as the box from whence it was wafted. Downward it fluttered, a messenger of amity, like a dove to his gauntlet. And with the favor went a smile from the Lady of the Lists. But while Bon Vouloir stood there, the symbol in his hand and the applause ringing in his ears, into the tenor of his thoughts, the consciousness of partly gratified ambition, there crept an insinuating warning of danger.
"My Lord," said the trooper with the red mustache, riding by the side of his master, "the fool is plotting further mischief."
"What mean you?" asked the free baron, frowning, as he turned toward his side of the field.