ips, and, wheeling abruptly, left her.

"Ah!" thought Triboulet, ominously, who had been closely observing
them, "the king is much displeased."

Had the duchess observed the monarch's lack of warmth? At any rate,
somewhat perplexedly she regarded the departing figure of the king;
then humming lightly, turned to a mirror to adjust a ringlet which had
fallen from the golden net binding her tresses.

"_Mere de Dieu_! woman never held man--or king--by sighing," she
thought, and laughed, remembering the Countess of Chateaubriant; a
veritable Niobe when the monarch had sent her home.

But Triboulet drew a wry face; his little heart was beating
tremulously; dark shadows crossed his mind. Two portentous stars had
appeared in the horoscope of his destiny: he who had been the foreign
fool; she who was the daughter of the constable. Almost fiercely the
hunchback surveyed the beautiful woman before him. With her downfall
would come his own, and he believed the king had wearied of her. How
hateful was her fair face to him at that moment! Already in
imagination he experienced the bitterness of the fall from his high
estates, and shudderingly looked back to his own lowly beginning: a
beggarly street-player of bagpipes; ragged, wretched, importuning
passers-by for coppers; reviled by every urchin. But she, meeting his
glance and reading his thought, only clapped her hands recklessly.

"How unhappy you look," she said.

"Madam, do you think the duke--" he began.

"I think he will cut off your head," she exclaimed, and Triboulet
turned yellow; but a few moments later took heart, the duchess was so
lightsome.

"By my sword--if I had one--our jestress has made a triumphant return,"
commented Caillette as he stood with the Duke of Friedwald near one of
the windows, surveying the animated scene. "Already are some of the
ladies jealous as Barbary pigeons. Her appearance has been remarked by
the Duc de Montrin and other gentlemen in attendance, and--look! Now
the great De Guise approaches her. Here one belongs to everybody."

The other did not answer and Caillette glanced quickly at him. "You
will not think me over-bold," he went on, after a moment's hesitation,
"if I mention what is being whispered--by them?" including in a look
and the uplifting of his eyebrows the entire court. The duke laid his
hand warmly on the shoulder of the poet-fool. "Is there not that
between us which precludes the question?"

"I should not