adly with that
which they had presented a few hours before. Magnificently attired at
the start of the hunt, those seigneurs, who looked so resplendent in
their rich tunics of silk, now presented a sight that was as ridiculous
as it was pitiful. The embroideries on their tunics, at first so rich in
color, were now frayed, soiled with mud, and torn by the branches of the
trees and the thorns of the briars; the feathers that floated proudly
from their caps, now drooped, wet, broken and draggled, resembling long,
dislocated, and limp fish-bones; the boots of oriental leather had
vanished under a thick coat of slush, and not a few of them, torn by the
thorns, exposed their owners' hose, not infrequently also their skin
itself. They shivered and looked distressed. Charles, on the contrary,
simply and warmly dressed in his thick sheep-skin coat, which reached
down over his boots of rough leather, and his head covered with his
badger-skin bonnet, rubbed his hands with a cunning look of satisfaction
in his eyes at the sight of his courtiers shivering with the cold and
the wet. After contemplating the spectacle for a moment, Charles made a
sign of intelligence to Amael and said to him in an undertone:

"Just before breaking ranks for the hunt, I recommended you to observe
the magnificence of the costumes of these coxcombs, who are as vain as
Asiatic peacocks, and even more devoid of brains than the bird whose
spoils they wear. Look at them now--the fine fellows!" Amael smiled
approvingly, while the Emperor, shrugging his shoulders, turned to the
seigneurs with his squalling voice: "Oh, ye most foolish of people,
which is at this moment the most precious and useful of all our raiment?
Mine, which I bought with barely a sou? Or yours, which you have had to
pay for through the nose?"

At this judicious raillery, the courtiers remained silent and confused,
while the Emperor, placing both his hands on his spacious paunch, roared
out aloud.

"Charles," Amael said to him unheard by the others, "I prefer to hear
you speak with that sly wisdom than to see you disemboweling stags."

But the Emperor did not answer the aged Breton. He suddenly interrupted
the discourse, extending his hand towards a group of nearby serfs, and
crying out:

"Oh! Look at that pretty girl!"

Amael followed with his eyes the direction indicated by Charles and saw
amid several of the woodcutter slaves of the forest who had been
attracted by curiosity to see