[7]: Le roi jouait au trictrac: arrive un coup douteux: «Ah! voici Grammont qui nous jugera; Grammont, venez nous juger.—Sire, vous avez perdu.—Comment! vous ne savez pas encore....—Eh! ne voyez-vous pas, sire, que si le coup eût été seulement douteux, ces messieurs n'auraient pas manqué de vous donner gain de cause?»
[8]: «Il déterrait les malheureux pour les secourir.»
[9]:
For as Æneas bore his sire
Upon his shoulder through the fire,
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back.
[10]: Cette barbe était taillée en bêche.
[11]:
His tawny beard was th'equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile:
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange, mix'd with grey.
The hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns:
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state's were made:
Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
In time to make a nation rue;
Thought it contributed its own fall,
To wait upon the public downfall....—
"Twas bound to suffer persecution,
And martyrdom, with resolution;
T'oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of th'incensed state,
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn,
With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revild, and spit upon, and martyr'd.
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast,
As long as monarchy should last;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state,
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with his whiskers,
And twine so close, that Time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever:
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow.
[12]:
This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age,
And therefore waited on him so
As Dwarfs upon Knights errants do...
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread.
... 'T would make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth.
[13]: