"My master sent me to the princess. 'I'll miss thee, rogue,' said he. ''Tis proof of love to send thee, my merry companion of the wine cup! But go! Nature hath formed thee to conjure sadness from a lady's face.' So I set out upon my perilous journey, and, favored by fortune, am but safely arrived. I was e'en now about to repair to the princess, whom I trust, in my humble way, to amuse."
"And thou shalt!" said the king, significantly.
"Oh, your Majesty!" with assumed modesty.
"That is," added Francis, "if it will amuse her to see you hanged!"
"And if it did not amuse her, Sire?" spoke up the new-comer, without a tremor in his voice.
"It would be a breach of hospitality to hang me, the servant of the duke who is servant of Charles V!" he replied boldly.
Francis started. Like a menace shone the arms of the great emperor. Vividly he recalled his own humiliation, his long captivity, and mistrusted the power of his subtile, amiable friend-enemy. Friendship? Sweeter was hatred. But the promptings of wisdom had suggested the policy of peace; the reins of expediency drove him, autocrat or slave, to the doctrines of loving brotherhood. He turned his gloomy eyes upon the glowing countenance of Triboulet.
"Your Majesty," answered the eager dwarf, "could hang him without breach of hospitality."
"How do you make that good, Triboulet?" asked the monarch.
"The duke has given him to the princess. The princess is a subject of your Majesty. The king of France has jurisdiction over the princess' fool and surely can proceed in so small a matter as hanging him."
Francis bent a malignant look upon the young man. Behind the dwarf stood the jestress, now an earnest spectator of the scene.
"This new-comer's stay with us promises to be brief, Caillette," she whispered.
"Hark, you witch! He answers," returned the poet.
"What can he say?" she retorted, shrugging her shoulders. "He is already condemned."
"Are you pleased, mistress? Just because the poor fellow stared at you overmuch."
"Oh," she said, insensibly, "it was written he should hang himself. Now we'll hear how ably Audacity parleys with Fate."
"It would be no breach of hospitality, Sire, to hang the princess' fool," spoke the condemned man with no sign of waning confidence, "yet it would seem to depreciate the duke's gift. Your Majesty should hang the one and spare the other. 'Tis a matter of logic," he went on quickly, "to point out where the duke's gift ends and the princess' fool begins. A gift is a gift until it is received. The princess has not yet received the duke's gift. Therefore, your Majesty can not hang me, as the princess' fool; nor would your Majesty desire to hang me as the duke's gift."