the grief that followed
after. For she did not submit easily. Having broken the rules, she would
find fault with them! She would advise and criticise, and "being a
fool," instruct the wise, and deal out praise or blame like a child. But
"the wise" only smiled. It was as if a little mechanical toy should be
contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly _make_ it.
Thus, as a mechanical toy, was the only way to treat this minute critic,
for like the Duke at Ferrara, this Duke (and his mother) did not choose
to stoop. _He_ would merely wear his "cursed smirk" as he nodded
applause, but he had some trouble in keeping off the "old mother-cat's
claws."

"So the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling."

_Then all smiles stopped together_ . . . And the Duke, perceiving, said
to himself that it was done to spite him, but that he would find the way
to deal with it.

Like the envoy, our huntsman's friend is beginning to find the tale a
little more than he can stand--but, unlike the envoy, he can express
himself. The old man soothes him down: "Don't swear, friend!" and goes
on to solace him by telling how the "old one" has been in hell for many
a year,

"And the Duke's self . . . you shall hear."

+ + + + +

"Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh, tender ice,"

it chanced that the Duke, asking himself what pleasures were in season
(he would never have known, unless "the calendar bade him be hearty"),
found that a hunting party was indicated:

"Always provided, old books showed the way of it!"

Poetry, painting, tapestries, woodcraft, all were consulted: how it was
properest to encourage your dog, how best to pray to St. Hubert, patron
saint of hunters. The serfs and thralls were duly dressed up,

"And oh, the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!"

But when all "the first dizziness of flap-hats and buff-coats and
jack-boots" had subsided, the Duke turned his attention to the Duchess's
part in the business, and, after much cogitation, somebody triumphantly
announced that he had discovered her function. An old book stated it:

"When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
And with water to wash the hands of her liege
In a clean ewer with a fair