"Caillette," said the low voice of the duke's jester at his elbow,
"would you see a woman undone?"

"Why, _mon ami_!" lightly answered the French fool, "I've seen many
undone--by themselves."

"Ah," returned the other, "I appeal to your chivalry, and you answer
with a jest."

"How else," asked Caillette, with a peculiar smile that was at once
sweet and mournful, "can one take woman, save as a jest--a pleasant
mockery?"

"Your irony precludes the test of friendship--the service I was about
to ask of you," retorted the duke's fool, gravely.

"Test of friendship!" exclaimed the poet. "'Tis the only thing I
believe in. Love! What is it? A flame! a breath! Look out there--at
the flatterers and royal sycophants. Those are your emissaries of
love. Ye gods! into the breasts of what jack-a-dandies and parasites
has descended the unquenchable fire of Jove! Now as for
comradeship"--placing his hand affectionately on the other's
shoulder--"by Castor and Pollux, and all the other inseparables, 'tis
another thing. But expound this strange anomaly--a woman wronged. Who
is the woman?"

"The Princess Louise!"

Caillette glanced from the place where he stood to the center of the
stand and the white bower, inclining from which was a woman, haughty,
fair, beautiful; one whose face attracted the attention of the
multitude and who seemed not unhappy in being thus scrutinized and
admired. Shaking his head slowly, the court poet dropped his eyes and
studied the sand at his feet.

"She looks not wronged," he said, dryly. "She appears to enjoy her
triumphs."

"And yet, Caillette, 'tis all a farce," answered the duke's jester.

"So have I--thought--on other occasions."

And again his gaze flew upward, not, however, to the lady whom Francis
had gallantly chosen for Queen of Beauty, but, despite his alleged
cynicism, to a corner of the king's own box, where sat she who had once
been a laughing maid by his side and with whom he had played that
diverting pastoral, called "First Love." It was only an instant's
return into the farcical but joyous past, and a moment later he was
sharply recalled into the arid present by the words of his companion.

"The man the Princess Louise is going to marry is no more Robert, the
Duke of Friedwald, than you are!" exclaimed the foreign fool. "He is
the bastard of Pfalz-Urfeld, the so-called free baron of Hochfels. His
castle commands the road between the true duke and Francis' domains.