"That is what you said before," interrupted the fool again, "and I say she must have been a very silly little woman." "Fool, do you not know that you are daring to criticise a princess of Scotland, daughter of James the Second of that country?" "I do not care if she was the daughter of his present Majesty, Henry the Seventh of England; it was foolish of her to try to make people doubt the evidence of their own eyes." "Will you let me finish, you great gawk?" Then raising her voice and speaking very rapidly the duchess went on, "The dauphiness said, 'I did not kiss the man, but that precious mouth from which has come so many noble and virtuous words.'" "I call that a very slipshod way to get out of it," replied the fool. "Let us take an example. Suppose I had gone to the court of France and had cut off the late king's head. The soldiers arrest me and I say, 'I did not kill the man, I simply sliced off that head which has hatched up so many horrible schemes.' Would they apologize and let me go? Not a bit of it!" "But this, you see, was figurative." "I do not care what you call it. She kissed his lips, did she not?" "Yes." "And was not the man behind them at the time?" "Of course, but you see----" "Then there is nothing more to say about it," went on the fool. The duchess reflected seriously for a moment and then seemed to arrive at the conclusion that it would not pay her to continue the argument. Besides, she was somewhat muddled herself. She continued, "Was it a wonder that so gracious a lady should have been misunderstood at such a court? And she died mysteriously, Le Glorieux, when she was but one-and-twenty, and in her illness she said, 'Fie upon this life; let no one talk more of it to me!'" "I am not surprised that she felt that way," said the jester. "Now that Louis is dead, they say that he was not cruel, but firm. For my part, I do not like the kind of firmness that wants to hang or drown half the people in the kingdom, though it may be that I am too particular." "Yes, I remember that day as well as if it had been yesterday," went on the duchess, with her dull eyes fixed dreamily upon the red coals of the brazier, and the fool again glided behind her chair and resumed the handsprings. At last, attracted in the midst of her recollections by the incessant ringing of the little bells on the jester's cap, which his lively motions kept a-tinkle, the old lady craned her neck and glancing behind her chair caught him in the very act of standing on his head! Indignant at his inattention and forgetting the license accorded court fools, she seized her crutch and hit him a swift rap across the calves of the legs which caused him to reverse himself with a howl.