body! I verily believe he and his father both were created like that
giant. No that the King is sair to live with either, so that he can eat
and drink and daff, and be let alone to take his ease. I have seen him;
and my gude man and them we kenned have marked him this score of years;
and whether his kingdom were lost or won, whether his best friends were
free or bound, dead or alive, he recked as little as though it were a
game of chess, so that he can sit in the ingle neuk at Bourges and toy
with Madame de Beaute, shameless limmer that she is! and crack his fists
with yon viper, Jamet de Tillay, and the rest of the crew. But he'll
let you alone, and has a kindly word for them that don't cross him--and
there be those that would go through fire and water for him. He is no
that ill! But for his son, he has a sneer and a spite such as never his
father had. He is never a one to sit still and let things gang their
gate; but he has as little pity or compassion as his father, and if King
Charles will not stir a finger to hinder a gruesome deed, Dauphin Louis
will not spare to do it so that he can gain by it, and I trow verily
that to give pain and sting with that bitter tongue of his is joy to
him.'

'Then is there no love between him and our princess?'

'Alack, lady, there is love, but 'tis all on one side of the house. I
doubt me whether Messire le Dauphin hath it in him to love any living
creature. I longed, when I saw your maidens, that my poor lady had been
as bonnie as her sister Joanna; but mayhap that would not have served
her better. If she were as dull as the Duchess of Brittany--who they say
can scarce find a word to give to a stranger at Nantes--she might even
anger him less than she does with her wit and her books and her verses,
sitting up half the night to read and write rondeaux, forsooth!'

'Her blessed father's own daughter!'

'That may be; but how doth it suit a wife? It might serve here, where
every one is mad after poesy, as they call it; but such ways are in
no good odour with the French dames, who never put eye to book, pen to
paper, nor foot to ground if they can help it; and when she behoves to
gang off roaming afoot, as she did this morn, there's no garring the
ill-minded carlines believe that there's no ill purpose behind.'

'It is scarce wise.'

'Yet to hear her, 'tis such walking and wearing herself out that keeps
the life in her and alone gives her sleep. My puir bairn, worshipping
the very