Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

But, leaving these gentry to arrange their affairs with Heaven as they thought fit, we must follow for a time the person they mistook for their spiritual enemy, and must also endeavour to develope what was passing in his mind, which really did in some degree find utterance; he being one of those people whose lips--those ever unfaithful guardians of the treasures of the heart--are peculiarly apt to murmur forth unconsciously, that on which the mind is busy. His thoughts burst from him in broken murmured sentences, somewhat to the following effect:--"What matters it to me who is killed!--Say the villains kill the men-at-arms.--Haw, haw! haw, haw! 'Twill be rare sport!--And then we will strip them, and I shall have gold, gold, gold! But the men-at-arms will kill the villains. I care not! I will help to kill them:--then I shall get gold too.--Haw, haw, haw! The villains plundered some rich merchants yesterday, and I will plunder them to-morrow. Oh, rare! Then, that Thibalt of Auvergne may be killed in the melée, with his cold look and his sneer.--Oh! how I shall like to see that lip, that called me De Coucy's fool juggler,--how I shall like to see it grinning with death! I will have one of his white fore-teeth for a mouth-piece to my reed flute, and one of his arm bones polished, to whip tops withal.--Haw, haw, haw! De Coucy's fool juggler!--Haw, haw! haw, haw! Ay, and my good Lord de Coucy!--the beggarly miscreant. He struck me, when I had got hold of a lord's daughter at the storming of Constantinople, and forbade me to show her violence.--Haw, haw! I paid him for meddling with my plunder, by stealing his; and, because I dared not carry it about, buried it in a field at Naples:--but I owe him the blow yet. It shall be paid!--Haw, haw, haw! Shall I tell him now the truth of what he sent me to Burgundy for? No, no, no! for then he'll sit at home at ease, and be a fine lord; and I shall be thrust into the kitchen, and called for, to amuse the noble knights and dames.--Haw, haw! No, no! he shall wander yet awhile; but I must make up my tale." And the profundity of thought into which he now fell, put a stop to his solitary loquacity; though ever and anon, as the various fragments of roguery, and villany, and folly, which formed the strange chaos of his mind, seemed, as it were, to knock against each other in the course of his cogitations, he would leer about, with a glance in which shrewdness certainly predominated over idiotcy, or would loll his tongue forth from his mouth, and, shutting one of his eyes, would make the other take the whole circuit of the earth and sky around him, as if he were mocking the universe itself; and then, at last, burst out into a long, shrill, ringing laugh, by the tone of which it was difficult to tell whether it proceeded from pain or from mirth.

CHAPTER VI.

The hermit was as good as his word; and in two days De Coucy, though certainly unable to forget that he had had a severe fall, was yet perfectly capable of mounting on horseback; and felt that, in the field or at the tournament, he could still have charged a good lance, or wielded a heavy mace. The night before, had arrived at the chapel the strange personage, some of whose cogitations we have recorded in the preceding chapter; and who, having been ransomed by the young knight in the holy land, had become in some sort his bondsman.

On a mistaken idea of his folly, De Coucy had built a still more mistaken idea of his honesty, attributing his faults to madness, and in the carelessness of his nature, looking upon many of his madnesses as virtues. That his intellect was greatly impaired, or rather warped, there can be no doubt; but it seemed, at the same time, that all the sense which he had left, had concentrated itself into an unfathomable fund of villany and malice, often equally uncalled for by others, and unserviceable to himself.

Originally one of the jugglers who had accompanied the second crusade to the Holy Land, he had been made prisoner by the infidels; and, after several years' bondage, had been redeemed by De Coucy, who, from mere compassion, treated him with the greater favour and kindness, because he was universally hated and avoided by every one; though, to say the truth, Gallon the fool, as he was called, was perfectly equal to hold his own part, being vigorous in no ordinary degree, expert at all weapons, and joining all the thousand tricks and arts of his ancient profession, to the sly cunning which so often supplies the place of judgment.

When brought into his lord's presence at the chapel of the Lake, and informed of the accident which had happened to him, without expressing any concern, he burst into one of his wild laughs, exclaiming, "Haw, haw, haw!--Oh, rare!"

"How now. Sir Gallon the fool!" cried De Coucy. "Do you laugh at your lord's misfortune?"

"Nay! I laugh to think him nearly as nimble as I am," replied the juggler, "and to find he can roll down a rock of twenty fathom, without dashing his brains out. Why, thou art nearly good enough for a minstrel's fool. Sire de Coucy!--Haw, haw, haw! How I should like to see thee tumbling before a cour plenière!";

The knight shook his fist at him, and bade him tell the success of his errand, feeling more galled by the jongleur's jest before the fair Isadore of the Mount, than he had ever felt upon a similar occasion.

"The success of my errand is very unsuccessful," replied the jongleur, wagging his nose, and shutting one of his eyes, while he fixed the other on De Coucy's face. "Your uncle, Count Gaston of Tankerville, will not send you a livre."