of a soldier, while a silken-shod foot
with which she tapped the ground would have nestled neatly in his palm.
Was it pique that moved her thus to address the duke's jester? Since
he had arrived, Jacqueline had been relegated, as it were, to the
corner. She, formerly ever first with the princess, had perforce stood
aside on the coming of the foreign fool whose company her mistress
strangely seemed to prefer to her own.

First had it been talking, walking and jesting, in which last
accomplishment he proved singularly expert, judging from the peals of
laughter to which her mistress occasionally gave vent. Then it had
become riding, hawking and, worst of all, reading. Lately Louise,
learned, as has been set forth, in the profane letters, had displayed a
marked favor for books of all kinds--The Tree of Battles, by Bonnet,
the Breviary of Nobles in verse, the "_Livre des faits d'armes et de
chevalerie_," by Christine de Pisan; and in a secluded garden spot,
with her fool and servant, she sedulously pursued her literary labors.

As books were rare, being hand-printed and hand-illumined, the
princess' choice of volumes was not large, but Marguerite, the king's
sister, possessed some rarely executed poems--in their mechanical
aspect; the monarch permitted her the use of several precious
chronicles; while the abbess in the convent near by, who esteemed
Louise for her piety and accomplishments, submitted to her care a
gorgeously painted, satin-bound Life of Saint Agnes, a Roman virgin who
died under the sanguinary persecution of Diocletian. But Jacqueline
frowningly noticed that the saint's life lay idle--conspicuously,
though fittingly, on the altar-table--while a manuscript of the Queen
of Navarre suspiciously accompanied the jester when he sought the
pleasant nook selected for reading and conversation.

It was to this spot the maid repaired one soft summer afternoon, where
she found the fool and a volume--Marguerite's, by the purple binding
and the love-knot in silver!--awaiting doubtless the coming of the
princess; and at the sight of them, the book of romance and the jester
who brought it, what wonder her patience gave way?

"You have been here now a fortnight, Monsieur Diplomat," she continued,
bending the eyes which Triboulet so feared upon the other.

"Thirteen days, to be exact, sweet Jacqueline!" he answered calmly.

"Indeed! Then there is some hope for you, if you've kept track of
time," she returned point