"No trade!" exclaimed Gallon.--"Haw, haw! Haw, haw! If you make no trade of it, with such merchandise as you have, you are not fit to hold a sow by the ear, or soap a cat's tail. Why! Do you not buy and sell?"
"Buy and sell!" said Jodelle, pondering. "Faith! I am heavy this morning. What should I buy or sell, either?"
"Lord now! Lord now!" cried Gallon, holding up both his hands. "To think that there is another man in all the world so stupid as my master and myself!--What should you buy and sell? Why, what better merchandise would you desire to sell to King John," he added, making his horse sidle up against the chief of the Brabançois, so that he could speak without being overheard by any one else,--"what better merchandise would you desire to sell to king John, than that fat flock of sheep before you, with the young ram, and his golden fleece, at the head of them;--and what would you desire better to buy, than white English silver, and yellow English gold?"
Jodelle looked in his face, to see if he could gather any thing from that; but all was one flat, dead blank; even his very nose was still and meaningless--one might as well have expected such words of devilish cunning from a stone wall.
"But my oath--my honour!" cried Jodelle, gazing on him still.
"Your oath!--Haw, haw!" shouted Gallon, convulsed with laughter,--"your honour!--Haw, haw! haw, haw! haw, haw!" And rolling about, as if he would have fallen from his horse, he galloped on, shouting, and roaring, and laughing, and screaming, till there was not a man in the array who did not turn his head to look at the strange being who dared to interrupt with such obstreperous merriment their leader's conversation.
De Coucy well knew the sounds, and turned to chide; but Arthur, who had been before amused with Gallon's humour, called him to approach for the purpose of jesting with him, with that boyish susceptibility of absurdities which characterised the age.
Gallon was as much at his ease amongst princes and barons as amongst peasants and serving men; and, seeming to forget all that he had just been speaking of, he dashed off into some new strain of eccentricity better suited to his auditors.
Jodelle, who, trembling for the result, had so far forgot himself as to ride on to listen, now rendered secure by the juggler's flighty change of topic, dropped back into the rear, and the whole cavalcade moved gently on to Tours.
While preparing for the prince's banquet in the evening, the place at De Coucy's elbow was filled by Gallon the fool, who somewhat in a more sane and placable humour than usual, amused his lord with various tales and anecdotes, neither so disjointed nor so disfigured as his relations usually were. The last, however, which he thought fit to tell--what he had overheard through the unglazed window of the hermit's cell on the night before the party of Arthur quitted Paris, caused De Coucy instantly to write a few words to the Count d'Auvergne, and putting it in the hands of his page, he bade him ride for his life, and deliver the letter wherever he should find the count, were it even in the presence of the king himself. The fatigued state of the horses prevented the lad from setting out that night, but by daylight next morning he was in the saddle, and away upon a journey which we may have cause to trace more particularly hereafter.