Poetry, painting, tapestries, woodcraft, all were consulted: how it was properest to encourage your dog, how best to pray to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. The serfs and thralls were duly dressed up, "And oh, the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!" But when all "the first dizziness of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots" had subsided, the Duke turned his attention to the Duchess's part in the business, and, after much cogitation, somebody triumphantly announced that he had discovered her function. An old book stated it: "When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege, Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet, And with water to wash the hands of her liege In a clean ewer with a fair toweling, Let her preside at the disemboweling." All was accordingly got ready: the towel, the most antique ewer, even the jennet, piebald, black-barred, cream-coated, pink-eyed--and only then, on the day before the party, was the Duke's pleasure signified to his lady. And the little Duchess--paler and paler every day--said she would not go! Her eyes, that used to leap wide in flashes, now just lifted their long lashes, as if too weary even for _him_ to light them; and she duly acknowledged his forethought for her, "But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught, Of the weight by day and the watch by night, And much wrong now that used to be right;" and, in short, utterly declined the "disemboweling." But everything was arranged! The Duke was nettled. Still she persisted: it was hardly the time . . . The huntsman knew what took place that day in the Duchess's room, because Jacynth, who was her tire-woman, was waiting within call outside on the balcony, and since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, the casement that Jacynth could peep through, an adorer of roses could peep through also. Well, the Duke "stood for a while in a sultry smother," and then "with a smile that partook of the awful," turned the Duchess over to his mother to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture, passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin--at any rate, he showed a very stiff back. However, next day the company mustered. The weather was execrable--fog that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with the annual gifts to the castle. For every year, in this North land, the Gipsies come to give "presents" to the Dukes--presents for which an equivalent is always understood to be forthcoming.