'Nay, good uncle,' cried the jester, 'that would be but sorry sport! I do but walk in my sleep. Give me the wine, and thou wilt see me in my waking state.'
The earl signed to a page to pour out a cup of wine, and handed it to him. He drank it, not hastily, but sipping it, and smacking his lips with the air of a judge; and when he had drained the cup he turned it bottom upwards. He then performed a series of somersaults from one end of the long banqueting-hall to the other, and finished by springing upon the shoulders of Marlette, standing erect with one foot upon the table, and the other on his brother fool's neck.
'Ha! Good nuncles, I am like our lord King William astride of two kingdoms!' he cried, waving his bauble as if it were a sceptre, and aping an air of majesty, rendered most ridiculous by his effort to keep his balance on his unequal and, on one side, unsteady footing.
Marlette, astonished and quite at a nonplus, sought only to free himself from the weight on his shoulder, and with a yell dropped his half-empty goblet of wine, and dashed away, leaving the saucy Grillonne sprawling on his back on the table, while the pages sprang forward to rescue the dishes, and the bloodhounds snarled in fierce surprise.
'Help, help, good nuncles!' cried the jester. 'Mine island gives me the slip. Ah, well, I'll content myself with the continent! It hath good cheer upon it.' So saying, he began to help himself to the dainties in his reach.
The Earl of Hereford burst into a roar of laughter, but the jester's master, smiling grimly, bade him beware of unseemly subjects. 'Crowned heads are no fit themes for thy cracks, Sir Fool!' he said.
'Chide me not, my Earl of earls!' replied the jester, who saw that his lord was not seriously displeased. 'I meant no damage or irreverence. I have too great a respect for my hide, and would fain save it a tanning!' Wherewith he descended from the table with an air of the most sage gravity, calmly filling his pockets the while with simnels.
'Go to! Thou art an impudent knave!' cried De Guader; and Earl Roger, laughing more heartily than before, pulled out a penny (equal to about seventeen shillings and sixpence of our money) and tossed it to him.
'Thou art the prince of fools!' he exclaimed. 'Would I had thee in my following. Thou art of some worth to drive dull care away.'
In explanation of the fool's dangerous jest, we may relate how William of Normandy dealt with the Angevins when they dared to remind him that his mother was the daughter of a tanner, by ornamenting the walls of Alençon with hides, and shouting 'La Pel! à la Pel!' in ridicule, when he came to besiege their town. They had formed a tête-du-pont to cover the passage of the river, from which William dislodged them by filling up the moat with wood and firing it, so that the unfortunate Angevins were surrounded by flames, through which gleamed the swords of the mocking Normans, barring their passage to the river beyond. The half-roasted garrison fought with unavailing valour, but twenty surviving for a still worse fate from their relentless foe. William ordered their hands and feet to be cut off and their eyes to be put out, and despatched an Angevin soldier, who had previously been made prisoner, and who had witnessed the punishment, to tell the garrison how their comrades had fared, and to promise them a similar fate unless they surrendered before night. That they might not doubt the veracity of the messenger, he had the hands and feet which had been struck from the prisoners put into his mangonels, and shot them on to the walls, which so impressed the townsmen that they surrendered at once.