The Court Jester Part 10

"No," returned the fool, "I do not think it is."

"Then do not interrupt with silly questions," said she.

"I can tell a story of something that happened over a hundred years ago, in this very house, to one of my husband's ancestors," said the countess. Everybody shivered with expectancy, while the wind outside howled louder than ever; Antoine turned his back to the fire so that it would not be convenient for anything to grab him from that direction, while even Philibert, who was two years older, and who sat beside the countess, regretted vaguely that the dagger at his side would be of no avail against witches. For it seemed that if such creatures ever would feel an inclination to meddle with the affairs of mortals, this old castle with its vast rooms and dark corners would be the scene of their liveliest performances.

"As I said," began the countess, "it was a hundred years ago. The Lady Iolantha, whose father and brothers had all been killed in the wars, lived here alone. She was the most beautiful woman of her time, and she was betrothed to her cousin, Count Wolfgang, who had inherited the t.i.tle without the wealth, for the money all had come from her mother's side of the house, and there was nothing left for the count but the empty castle, which he scorned to take unless the lady should come with it.

"Iolantha, who was willful, detested her cousin, having bestowed her affections upon a wandering minstrel by the name of Rudolph Eberhard, a handsome youth, and one who sang in a most charming voice. He lingered here day after day, and sang so many songs in praise of her beauty that she determined to marry him, come what would. Wolfgang was not a man to win the heart of a maiden, for, though young, he had a dark, forbidding countenance, and a harsh, discordant voice. Every one feared him, and it was believed by many that he was in league with evil spirits."

"A cheerful kind of an ancestor, that one of yours," remarked Le Glorieux to the count.

"But he lived a hundred years ago; his blood has been filtered away by this time, at least all that was bad in it," said the countess. "The Count Wolfgang knew that his cousin cared nothing for him, still he was determined to hold her to her promise, and he was resolved, by fair means or foul, to get the young minstrel out of the way." The countess now unclasped a girdle that hung loosely about her waist, with long ends coming almost to the floor, and held it up that all might see it. It was made of flexible silver fretwork, and was set with emeralds. "There is a tradition that when this girdle is lost by the Von Hohenbergs their luck will go with it," went on the countess, "so Iolantha cherished it very highly. One night after dancing in the great hall, a dance in which Rudolph was her partner, the girdle suddenly disappeared in a manner that was most unaccountable. They searched everywhere, but it could not be found, and one by one the servants were accused, but all to no avail.

Then tauntingly Wolfgang demanded that Rudolph be searched. Iolantha indignantly refused to have this done, deeming the very suggestion an insult to the man she loved and respected. But without more ado Wolfgang walked up to the young minstrel, and tearing open his doublet, found the girdle concealed on the inside of it."

"I suspected as much," remarked Le Glorieux, who, like every one else, had been very much interested in the story. "You see," he went on, "the minstrel was dancing with the lady, and it would be easy enough for him to unclasp the girdle and hide it in the folds of his mantle until he had a chance to tuck it away in his doublet."

"But wait," said the countess. "Rudolph was as much surprised as any one else and declared that he did not know how it came there."

"He, would naturally make that very remark," observed the fool.

"But Rudolph had not taken the girdle," said the countess triumphantly.

"The Count Wolfgang was in league with witches, and it was by their spells that the girdle had come into the minstrel's possession. Servants told the story to their children, and so on down, of how that very night they had heard the witches singing their wild songs, and the old housekeeper saw them dancing in the moonlight. She said they were dressed in a gray, misty material like cobwebs."

"Did Iolantha marry the minstrel?" asked the princess.

"No, your Highness. There was nothing to prove that the witches did the trick, and she could not marry a man with so deep a stain upon his good name. So Rudolph marched away to the crusades, and Iolantha married Count Wolfgang."

"And she did a sensible thing," said Le Glorieux decisively. "I have distrusted that minstrel ever since you brought him into the story, which teaches that the man who does a wicked thing is bound to come out at the small end of the horn."

"Thank you, Fool," said the count, laughing. "You have cleared the good name of my ancestor and you are the first one in all these years to say a word in his favor, all preferring to take sides with the handsome minstrel."

CHAPTER VI

LADY CLOTILDE'S MOONSTONE PENDANT

The next morning a royal messenger arrived with a letter for the little princess, and Le Glorieux, who was present when she received it, saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks when she had finished reading it. "What is it, little Cousin?" asked the jester. "Strange that a mere piece of paper should stir you up like this."

"Oh, Le Glorieux," cried Marguerite, "my father does not love me!" And covering her face with her handkerchief, she burst into sobs.

"Well, now that is another strange thing," said he, sitting down at her feet and clasping his hands about his knees, while he surveyed her thoughtfully. "His Royal Highness takes the trouble to send a messenger across the country to tell his little daughter that he does not love her, when it would have been so much easier to let this wonderful piece of news wait until he stood face to face with her."

The princess patted her foot impatiently on the floor while the jester was speaking, then she said, restraining her sobs with an effort, "I have been so impatient to see him that I could scarcely wait for the days to pa.s.s, and every morning when I have wakened during our journey I have said to myself, 'One more day is off the list, and I am so many more leagues nearer to him than I was at this time yesterday.' And although the Countess Von Hohenberg is very kind, and has begged me to remain here for a time, still I wanted to go this very day," and again she began to sob.

"Yes," said the jester, "I understand your side of the question, and now I wonder if you won't tell me just what Max writes in his letter, and I will help you to decide just what he means by it."

"He--he--s-s-ays that we are to remain at Castle Hohenberg for three or four days in order that I may recover from the fatigue of the journey.

It is c-c-cruel!"

"It certainly is very cruel," replied Le Glorieux. "Odd that there should be such unnatural fathers in the world! A man must have a heart of flint to want his daughter to rest after a long journey."

"I do not at all consider this a subject for jest," said the little lady, surveying the jester indignantly through her tears.

"Looking at the matter broadly, I should say that it was just as much a subject for jesting as for weeping. Will your small Highness tell me what there is in all this to cry about? Do you not know that it is very foolish to cry about little things, and that the tears of even a princess are just as salt as those of anybody else, and if called up in abundance will make her eyes and nose just as red as those of a dairy maid who cries over a pail of spilled milk?"

"Le Glorieux," said Marguerite solemnly, "if my father is as anxious to see me as I am to see him, he would write 'Hurry, hurry,' in his letter instead of telling me to wait."

"Would you write 'Hurry, hurry,' to him if he were coming to you on a tiresome trip?"

"Indeed I would! I would say, 'Hurry, and hurry, and hurry again, for I long to embrace you.' Only think, I have lived for eight long years with no one near me but Cunegunda who really loves me, and none of my own blood to touch my brow with a kiss!"

"I do not know," said the fool reflectively, "how I should feel were there none near me to love me save Cunegunda, but I need not worry about that, for Cunegunda, if I read her aright, is not burned up with affection for me; but what you say proves to me that you are not really so fond of your father as he is of you."

"You are dreaming; what do you mean by such words?" asked the princess, wiping her eyes and looking haughtily at the jester. "I adore my father; he is dearer to me than all the crowns of the world."

"It is this way," said Le Glorieux; "as I remark probably once a day more or less, I am nothing but a fool, but nevertheless I say a good many wise things, and I think a good many more. Very often when I remain perfectly quiet my silence counts for a good deal, for I am thinking very hard about something. But as I was going to say, when one has the right kind of affection for another, there is not a grain of selfishness in it. Your father is just as anxious to see you as you are to see him, still at the same time he thinks of your comfort first and of his own wishes next."

"Do you think so, really?" asked Marguerite, smiling, then asked, "But why could he not have come to me himself instead of sending a messenger?"

"Kings and princes can not go about as they please, though they are always supposed to be doing what they like to do," replied Le Glorieux.

"A king can not even marry to please himself. He may say, 'I do not want a wife, I prefer to be a bachelor.' The state says, 'Not a bit of it; you must marry.' Then the state picks out a wife for him. If she is pretty and agreeable he is lucky, but if she has a horrible squint and the temper of a tigress and the state says, 'Marry her,' why, marry her he must. Just now your father is probably cooking up a lot of schemes against France for its treatment of you and himself, and he is telling Spain and England how dearly he always loved them, and he is figuring out the lands that France ought to restore to him in return for his great disappointment, so he has no time to rush away to see his little daughter."

"Oh, Le Glorieux, you have made me so happy!" cried the princess, with shining eyes. "Then you think my father really is very fond of me!"

"I am sure of it, and I am sure that he will be still fonder of you when he sees you, for two reasons: one is that you look a good deal like himself, and the other that you will look at him with the very eyes of your mother."

"The marriage of my father and mother was a happy one, was it not, Le Glorieux?"

"Yes, little Cousin, that was one of the times when duty and inclination went hand in hand. That marriage was the best possible thing for both their countries, and the young couple were in love with each other from the moment when they first stood face to face, your beautiful mother being just a young slip of a girl, and your father but eighteen years of age. He was only twenty-three when she died, and he is still a young man, not so far past the first bloom of his youth."

The princess never tired of talking of her father and of her fair young mother, whose faces were known to her only from their portraits. Her brother, who was two years her senior, she often thought about, but it was her father who possessed the larger share of her affection.

It has been remarked of the Lady Clotilde that she always contrived to stir up some kind of commotion wherever she happened to be, and this journey was no exception to the general rule. The story of the emerald girdle, related by the countess the previous night, reminded the Lady Clotilde that she too owned a jewel which was said to bring good luck to her family, and the loss of which was to be followed by results too fearful to contemplate. It was a large moonstone, set as a pendant and surrounded by rubies. It had been curiously cut by an old Italian lapidary of the previous century, and represented a woman's face, which seemed to change its expression as the colors glimmering in the stone caught the light. This ornament had a great fascination for Le Glorieux.

In former days when the Lady Clotilde had wished a special favor from Charles the Bold, she often managed to obtain it through Le Glorieux, who would first make his master laugh, and then while he was in this genial frame of mind the jester would present his pet.i.tion in the cleverest way it could be framed. And being too penurious to reward her agent with a piece of money, the lady would say, "Le Glorieux, you may clean my jewels, for I know it must be a great pleasure to you to hold them in the sunlight and see them flash," and, while pretending to grant a favor to the jester, managed to gain one for herself.

Of all her trinkets, and she had many and valuable ones, none so charmed the fool as the moonstone pendant. Held in certain lights, the face seemed to dimple and smile upon him; in others, it was the face of a witch, or a gorgon, those dreadful beings the very sight of which would turn mortals into stone.

This ornament the Lady Clotilde was resolved to show to the countess, and descant on its history and its great value. With eager hands she unlocked the box of scented wood where the ornament was kept, and lo, the pendant was missing! Could she believe her eyes? In an agony of anxiety she tossed the jewels about, finally emptying the contents of the casket on the bed, where they flashed and glimmered like captive stars sending forth red, blue, and green lights. Frantically she picked them up one by one and shook them, but no moonstone was there!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It is gone, it is gone!" groaned the Lady Clotilde]

"It is gone, it is gone!" groaned the Lady Clotilde; then she sank to the floor and began to think of the many terrible things that might be expected to happen to that unlucky member of the family who should allow the stone to go out of his or her possession, the very thought of which made her tremble with terror. Calming herself at last, she reflected that some one must have taken the pendant, since such articles do not rise of their own accord, climb out of their boxes, and go swaggering about the world like a knight in search of adventure. And now the question was, who had taken it? She was sure that none but her own attendants had been near her room, but stay! a maid belonging to the countess had entered the room shortly after their arrival to bring a cup of hot mulled wine which the Lady Clotilde always required, or desired, which amounted to the same thing with her, after a journey in cold weather. She remembered that she had opened the casket and was just about to take out her ruby chain, which she considered a most becoming ornament for her more than generous length of neck, when the maid entered with the wine, and the girl must have slipped the moonstone from the box while the lady was sipping the contents of the cup. She recalled the appearance of the maid, a pale young creature with large startled dark eyes. She no doubt had thought that among so many handsome trinkets the loss of one never would be noticed by this rich and n.o.ble lady. The minx would find herself mistaken, however, for the Lady Clotilde was determined to report her loss at once, and to recover her property if it should become necessary to tear the castle down, stone by stone, in order to find it!

As it never had been her custom to delay after making a plan, she immediately stalked down the stone steps leading to the floor below, and entering the salon where the countess and her guests were whiling away the time at cards or with their embroidery, she advanced at once to her hostess. "Madame," said she, "I have lost a jewel. A valuable heirloom which has been in my possession, or rather in that of my family, for a hundred years, has disappeared from my casket."