R XI

A NEW MESSENGER TO THE EMPEROR

Between Caillette and the duke's jester had arisen one of those
friendships which spring more from similitude than unlikeness; an amity
of which each had been unconscious in its inception, but which had
gradually grown into a sentiment of comradeship. Caillette was of
noble mien, graceful manner and elegant address; a soldier by
preference; a jester against his will, forced to the office by the
nobleman who had cared for and educated him. In the duke's fool he had
found his other self; a man who like himself lent dignity to the gentle
art of jesting; who could turn a rhyme and raise a laugh without
resorting to grossness.

The line of demarcation between the clown and the merry-and-wise wit
was, in those days, not clearly drawn. The stories of the former,
which made the matrons look down and the maidens to hide their faces,
were often more appreciated by the inebriate nobles than some subtile
comicality or nimble lines of poetry, that would serve to take home and
think over, and which improved with time like a wine of sound body.
Triboulet abused the ancient art of foolery, thought Caillette; the
duke's _plaisant_ played upon it with true drollery, and as a master
who has a delicate ear for an instrument, so Caillette, being sensitive
to broadness or stupidity which masked as humor or pleasantry, turned
naturally from the mountebank to the true jester.

Moreover, Caillette experienced a superior sadness, sifted through
years of infestivity and gloom, beginning when Diane was led to the
altar by the grand seneschal of Normandy, that threw an actual, albeit
cynical, interest about the love-tragedy of the duke's fool which the
other divined and--from his own past heart-throbs--understood. The
_plaisant_ to the princess' betrothed, Caillette would have sworn, was
of gentle birth; his face, manner and bearing proclaimed it; he was,
also, a scholar and a poet; his courage, which Caillette divined,
fitted him for the higher office of arms. Certainly, he became an
interesting companion, and the French jester sought his company on
every occasion. And this fellowship, or intimacy, which he courted was
destined to send Caillette forth on a strange and adventuresome mission.

The day following the return of the duke's fool to the castle, Francis,
who early in his reign had sought to model his life after the
chivalrous romances, inaugurated a splendid and pompous tournament.
Some tim