d mine--my love!" he repeated; and then
stared sharply across the table at his jester.

Triboulet, swaggering in his chair, so high his feet could not touch
the floor, surveyed the broken glass, the duke and the duke's fool.
For some time his vigilant eyes had been covertly studying the
unconscious foreign jester, noting sundry signs and symptoms. Nor had
the princess' look when the goblet had fallen, been lost upon the
misshapen buffoon; alert, wide-awake, his mind, quick to suspect,
reached a sudden conclusion; a conclusion which by rapid process of
reasoning became a conviction. Privileged to speak where others must
need be silent, his profession that of prying subtlety, which spared
neither rank nor power so that it raised a laugh, he felt no hesitation
in publishing the information he had gleaned by his superior mental
nimbleness.

"Ho! ho!" he bellowed, the better to attract attention to himself.
"The duke sent his fool to amuse his betrothed and the fool hath lost
his heart to his mistress."

The king left off his whispering, Catharine turned from the chancellor,
Diane ceased furtively to regard Caillette, while the Queen of Navarre
laughed nervously and murmured:

"Princess and jester! It will make another tale."

But Henry of Navarre looked gravely down. He, and Francis' queen--a
passive spectator at the feast--and a bishop, whose interest lay in a
truffled capon, alone followed not the direction of the duke's eyes.
The fair favorite of the king clapped her hands, but the monarch
frowned, not having forgotten that night in Fools' hall when the jester
had appointed rogues to offices.

"What is this? A fool in love with the princess?" said the king,
ominously.

"Even so, your Majesty," cried Triboulet. "But a moment ago Duke
Robert did whisper to his bride-to-be, and the fool's hand trembled
like a leaf and dropped his glass. Tra! la! la! What a situation!
Holy Saint-Bagpipe! Here's a comedy in high life!"

"A comedy!" repeated the duke, and half-rose from his chair, regarding
his fool with surprise and anger.

Now Triboulet roared. Had he not in the past attained his high
position of favorite jester to the king by his very foolhardihood? And
were not trusting lovers and all too-confiding husbands the legitimate
butt of all jesting?

"Look at the fool," he went on exultantly. "Does any one doubt his
guilt? He is silent; he can not speak!"

And, indeed, the foreign jester seemed momenta