--for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one good thing left in these evil days: "So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it, This Duke would fain know he was, without being it." It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages were revived: "The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out." The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs and length, all speed, no strength: "They should have set him on red Berold, Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . . With the red eye slow consuming in fire, And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!" Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations. "Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard: And out of a convent, at the word, Came the lady in time of spring. --Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!" Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo: "And so we saw the lady arrive; My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger! She was the smallest lady alive, Made in a piece of Nature's madness, Too small, almost, for the life and gladness That over-filled her." She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle, where the Duke awaited her. "Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at from outside the walls" --and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?" Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess--but she _is_ the same!), the little lady rode forward: "When suddenly appeared the Duke." She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky sullied by a chill wind, "The lady's face stopped its play, As if her first hair had grown grey; For such things must begin some one day."