“I said, sirs,” said the King, turning around, without any show of angry emotion, “that in the Count Philip of Crevecoeur, our cousin the Duke possesses as worthy a servant as ever rode at a prince's right hand.—But you prevailed with him to stay?”
“To stay for twenty-four hours; and in the meanwhile to receive again his gage of defiance,” said the Cardinal; “he has dismounted at the Fleur de Lys.”
“See that he be nobly attended and cared for, at our charges,” said the King; “such a servant is a jewel in a prince's crown. Twenty-four hours?” he added, muttering to himself, and looking as if he were stretching his eyes to see into futurity; “twenty-four hours? It is of the shortest. Yet twenty-four hours, ably and skilfully employed, may be worth a year in the hand of indolent or incapable agents.—Well—to the forest—to the forest, my gallant lords!—Orleans, my fair kinsman, lay aside that modesty, though it becomes you; mind not my Joan's coyness. The Loire may as soon avoid mingling with the Cher, as she from favouring your suit, or you from preferring it,” he added, as the unhappy prince moved slowly on after his betrothed bride. “And now for your boar spears, gentlemen—for Allegre, my pricker, hath harboured one that will try both dog and man.—Dunois, lend me your spear—take mine, it is too weighty for me; but when did you complain of such a fault in your lance?—To horse—to horse, gentlemen.”
And all the chase rode on.
CHAPTER IX: THE BOAR HUNT
I will converse with unrespective boys
And iron witted fools. None are for me
that look into me with suspicious eyes.
KING RICHARD
All the experience which the Cardinal had been able to collect of his master's disposition, did not, upon the present occasion, prevent his falling into a great error of policy. His vanity induced him to think that he had been more successful in prevailing upon the Count of Crevecoeur to remain at Tours, than any other moderator whom the King might have employed, would, in all probability, have been. And as he was well aware of the importance which Louis attached to the postponement of a war with the Duke of Burgundy, he could not help showing that he conceived himself to have rendered the King great and acceptable service. He pressed nearer to the King's person than he was wont to do, and endeavoured to engage him in conversation on the events of the morning.
This was injudicious in more respects than one, for princes love not to see their subjects approach them with an air conscious of deserving, and thereby seeming desirous to extort, acknowledgment and recompense for their services; and Louis, the most jealous monarch that ever lived, was peculiarly averse and inaccessible to any one who seemed either to presume upon service rendered or to pry into his secrets.
Yet, hurried away, as the most cautious sometimes are, by the self satisfied humour of the moment, the Cardinal continued to ride on the King's right hand, turning the discourse, whenever it was possible, upon Crevecoeur and his embassy which, although it might be the matter at that moment most in the King's thoughts, was nevertheless precisely that which he was least willing to converse on. At length Louis, who had listened to him with attention, yet without having returned any answer which could tend to prolong the conversation, signed to Dunois, who rode at no great distance, to come up on the other side of his horse.