have little _golden bells_ fastened round their legs, neck, and elbows, to the sound of which they dance before the king.--The Arabian princesses wear golden rings on their fingers, to which _little bells_ are suspended, as in the flowing tresses of their hair, that their superior rank may be known, and they themselves receive in passing the homage due to them.'[280]--Such are bells in the East: let us now see what they have been in Europe at different periods. "The Emperor Henry IV, who died in 1197, and Wulphilde, the wife of Count Rodolph, living in 1138, are represented in ancient monuments in habits ornamented with bells similar to those which are seen on Tarots. It would seem that this singular ornament, which subsequently became the attribute of the buffoon, or professional jester, was then a mark of dignity in the West as well as in the East, and that it held a conspicuous place amongst the distinctive ornaments of the princes and nobles of Germany, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century.[281] Some English critics, however, have supposed that the bell indicated falconry,[282] a sport which the high nobility only had the privilege of indulging in; and it is certain that small bells were attached to the feet of trained falcons.[283] But the question is, did the bells stand for the falcon, and was the falcon, indeed, a mark of high nobility? "What renders this conjecture probable is, that we find the use of the small bell [grelot] established in the West before the introduction of heraldic signs, and that we have no evidence of its having been known to the ancient Greeks and Romans.[284] As the bell was used in falconry by princes and nobles of the first class, it might thus become the emblem of the falcon, and, subsequently, that of the nobility to whom it was confined. The falcon, and things pertaining to falconry, were certainly among the marks of grandeur with which the sovereigns and barons of the middle ages loved to surround themselves in their formal displays, and which alone were sufficient, in the same manner as armorial bearings, to indicate the rank of the persons to whom they belonged. In the tapestry ascribed to Queen Matilda, Harold is seen travelling with his falcon on his fist; and the Count Guy de Ponthieu, who conducts him prisoner to Beaurain, carries also his bird in the same manner, although he, doubtless, had no thought of the chase.[285] Besides, sceptres are surmounted with three-branched _fleurons_, like those which form the ornament on the top of a falcon's hood.[286] We also see hawks and falcons on ancient tombs; and it is not unlikely that they were there placed as indications of rank before the introduction of armorial bearings. The same conventional distinctions were still in existence in much more recent times; for Anne de Montmorency made his entry into London as ambassador of Francis I, preceded by twenty-six gentlemen of the best houses of France, each