thief, and murderer. – And begone! – Yet stay. – Never herald went from the Court of Burgundy without having cause to cry, Largesse! – Let him be scourged till the bones are laid bare!'
'Nay, but if it please your Grace,' said Crevecoeur and D'Hymbercourt together, 'he is a herald, and so far privileged.'
'It is you, Messires,' replied the Duke, 'who are such owls, as to think that the tabard makes the herald. I see by that fellow's blazoning he is a mere impostor. Let Toison d'Or step forward, and question him in your presence.'
In spite of his natural effrontery, the envoy of the Wild Boar of Ardennes now became pale; and that notwithstanding some touches of paint with which he had adorned his countenance. Toison d'Or, the chief herald, as we have elsewhere said, of the Duke, and King-at-arms within his dominions, stepped forward with the solemnity of one who knew what was due to his office, and asked his supposed brother, in what College he had studied the science which he professed.
'I was bred a pursuivant at the Heraldic College of Ratisbon,' answered Rouge Sanglier, 'and received the diploma of Ehrenhold from that same learned fraternity.'
'You could not derive it from a source more worthy,' answered Toison d'Or, bowing still lower than he had done before; 'and if I presume to confer with you on the mysteries of our sublime science, in obedience to the orders of the most gracious Duke, it is not in hopes of giving, but of receiving knowledge.'
'Go to,' said the Duke, impatiently. 'Leave off ceremony, and ask him some question that may try his skill.'
'It were injustice to ask a disciple of the worthy College of Arms at Ratisbon, if he comprehendeth the common terms of blazonry,' said Toison d'Or; 'but I may, without offence, crave of Rouge Sanglier to say, if he is instructed in the more mysterious and secret terms of the science, by which the more learned do emblematically, and as it were parabolically, express to each other what is conveyed to others in the ordinary language, taught in the very accidence as it were of Heraldry?'
'I understand one sort of blazonry as well as another,' answered Rouge Sanglier, boldly; 'but it may be we have not the same terms in Germany which you have here in Flanders.'
'Alas, that you will say so!' replied Toison d'Or; 'our noble science, which is indeed the very banner of nobleness, and glory of generosity, being the same in all Christian countries, nay, known and acknowledged even by the Saracens and Moors. I would, therefore, pray of you to describe what coat you will after the celestial fashion, that is, by the planets.'
'Blazon it yourself as you will,' said Rouge Sanglier; 'I will do no such apish tricks upon commandment, as an ape is made to come aloft.'
'Show him a coat, and let him blazon it his own way,' said the Duke; 'and if he fails, I promise him that his back shall be gules, azure, and sable.'
'Here,' said the herald of Burgundy, taking from his pouch a piece of parchment, 'is a scroll, in which certain considerations led me to prick down, after my own poor fashion, an ancient coat. I will pray my brother, if indeed he belong to the honourable College of Arms at Ratisbon, to decipher it in fitting language.'
Le Glorieux, who seemed to take great pleasure in this discussion, had by this time bustled himself close up to the two heralds. 'I will help thee, good fellow,' said he to Rouge Sanglier, as he looked hopelessly upon the scroll. 'This, my lords and masters, represents the cat looking out at the dairy-window.'
This sally occasioned a laugh, which was something to the advantage of Rouge Sanglier, as it led Toison d'Or, indignant at the misconstruction of his drawing, to explain it as the coat-of-arms assumed by Childebert, King of France, after he had taken prisoner Gandemar, King of Burgundy; representing an ounce, or tiger-cat, the emblem of the captive prince, behind a grating, or, as Toison d'Or technically defined it, 'Sable, a musion passant Or, oppressed with a trellis gules, cloue of the second.'
'By my bauble,' said Le Glorieux, 'if the cat resemble Burgundy, she has the right side of the grating now- a-days.'
'True, good fellow,' said Louis, laughing, while the rest of the presence, and even Charles himself, seemed disconcerted at so broad a jest, – 'I owe thee a piece of gold for turning something that looked like sad earnest, into the merry game which I trust it will end in.'
'Silence, Le Glorieux,' said the Duke; 'and you, Toison d'Or, who are too learned to be intelligible, stand back, – and bring that rascal forward, some of you. – Hark ye, villain,' he said, in his harshest tone, 'do you know the difference between argent and or, except in the shape of coined money?'
'For pity's sake, your Grace, be good unto me! – Noble King Louis, speak for me!'
'Speak for thyself,' said the Duke – 'In a word, art thou herald or not?'
'Only for this occasion!' acknowledged the detected official.
'Now, by St George!' said the Duke, eyeing Louis askance, 'we know no king – no gentleman – save one, who would have so prostituted the noble science on which royalty and gentry rest! save that King, who sent to Edward of England a serving man disguised as a herald[57].'
'Such a stratagem,' said Louis, laughing or affecting to laugh, 'could only be justified at a Court where no heralds were at the time, and when the emergency was urgent. But, though it might have passed on the blunt and thick-witted islander, no one with brains a whit better than those of a wild boar would have thought of passing such a trick upon the accomplished Court of Burgundy.'
'Send him who will,' said the Duke, fiercely, 'he shall return on their hands in poor case. – Here! – drag him to the market-place! – slash him with bridle-reins and dog-whips until the tabard hang about him in tatters! – Upon the Rouge Sanglier! – ca, ca! – Haloo, haloo!'
Four or five large hounds, such as are painted in the hunting-pieces upon which Rubens and Schneiders laboured in conjunction, caught the well-known notes with which the Duke concluded, and began to yell and bay as if the boar were just roused from his lair.
'By the rood!' said King Louis, observant to catch the vein of his dangerous cousin, 'since the ass has put on the boar's hide, I would set the dogs on him to bait him out of it!'
'Right! right!' exclaimed Duke Charles, the fancy exactly chiming in with his humour at the moment – 'it shall be done! – uncouple the hounds! – Hyke a Talbot! hyke a Beaumont! – We will course him from the door of the Castle to the east gate.'
'I trust your Grace will treat me as a beast of chase,' said the fellow, putting the best face he could upon the matter, 'and allow me fair law?'
'Thou art but vermin,' said the Duke, 'and entitled to no law, by the letter of the book of hunting; nevertheless thou shalt have sixty yards in advance, were it but for the sake of thy unparalleled impudence. – Away, away, sirs! – we will see this sport.' – And the council breaking up tumultuously, all hurried, none faster than the two Princes, to enjoy the humane pastime which King Louis had suggested.
The Rouge Sanglier showed excellent sport; for, winged with terror, and having half a score of fierce boar-hounds hard at his haunches, encouraged by the blowing of horns and the woodland cheer of the hunters, he flew like the very wind, and had he not been encumbered with his herald's coat, (the worst possible habit for a runner,) he might fairly have escaped dog-free; he also doubled once or twice, in a manner much approved of by the spectators. None of these, nay, not even Charles himself, was so delighted with the sport as King Louis, who, partly from political considerations, and partly as being naturally pleased with the sight of human suffering when ludicrously exhibited, laughed till the tears ran from his eyes, and in his ecstasies of rapture, caught hold of the Duke's ermine cloak, as if to support himself; whilst the Duke, no less delighted, flung his arm around the King's shoulder, making thus an exhibition of confidential sympathy and familiarity, very much at variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together.
At length the speed of the pseudo-herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out – 'Stave and tail! – stave and tail! – Take them off him! – He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will not have him dispatched.'
Several officers accordingly busied themselves in taking off the dogs; and they were soon seen coupling some up, and pursuing others which ran through the streets, shaking in sport and triumph the tattered fragments of painted cloth and embroidery rent from the tabard, which the unfortunate wearer had put on in an unlucky hour.
At this moment, and while the Duke was too much engaged with what passed before him to mind what
