“I owe thee a piece of gold for turning some thing that looked like sad earnest into the merry game, which I trust it will end in.”
“Silence, Le Glorieux,” said the Duke; “and you, Toison d'Or, who are too learned to be intelligible, stand back—and bring that rascal forward, some of you.—Hark ye, villain,” he said in his harshest tone, “do you know the difference between argent and or, except in the shape of coined money?”
“For pity's sake, your Grace, be good unto me!—Noble King Louis, speak for me!”
“Speak for thyself,” said the Duke. “In a word, art thou herald or not?”
“Only for this occasion!” acknowledged the detected official.
“Now, by Saint George!” said the Duke, eyeing Louis askance, “we know no king—no gentleman—save one, who would have so prostituted the noble science on which royalty and gentry rest, save that King who sent to Edward of England a serving man disguised as a herald.”
[The heralds of the middle ages were regarded almost as sacred characters. It was treasonable to strike a herald, or to counterfeit the character of one. Yet Louis “did not hesitate to practise such an imposition when he wished to enter into communication with Edward IV of England.... He selected, as an agentfit for his purpose, a simple valet. This man... he disguised as a herald, with all the insignia of his office, and sent him in that capacity to open a communication with the English army. The stratagem, though of so fraudulent a nature, does not seem to have been necessarily called for, since all that King Louis could gain by it would be that he did not commit himself by sending a more responsible messenger. ... Ferne... imputes this intrusion on their rights in some degree to necessity. 'I have heard some,' he says, '... allow of the action of Louis XI who had so unknightly a regard both of his own honour, and also of armes, that he seldom had about his court any officer at armes. And therefore, at such time as Edward IV, King of England,... lay before the town of Saint Quentin, the same French King, for want of a herald to carry his mind to the English King, was constrained to suborn a vadelict, or common serving man, with a trumpet banner, having a hole made through the middest for this preposterous herauld to put his head through, and to cast it over his shoulders instead of a better coat armour of France. And thus came this hastily arrayed courier as a counterfeit officer at armes, with instructions from his sovereign's mouth to offer peace to our King.' Ferne's Blazen of Gentry, 1586, p. 161.—S.]
“Such a stratagem,” said Louis, laughing, or affecting to laugh, “could only be justified at a Court where no herald were at the time, and when the emergency was urgent. But, though it might have passed on the blunt and thick witted islander, no one with brains a whit better than those of a wild boar would have thought of passing such a trick upon the accomplished Court of Burgundy.”
“Send him who will,” said the Duke fiercely, “he shall return on their hands in poor case.—Here!—drag him to the market place!—slash him with bridle reins and dog whips until the tabard hang about him in tatters!—Upon the Rouge Sanglier!—ca, ca!—Haloo, haloo!”
Four or five large hounds, such as are painted in the hunting pieces upon which Rubens and Schneiders laboured in conjunction, caught the well known notes with which the Duke concluded, and began to yell and bay as if the boar were just roused from his lair.