Thus said Captain Fox to his audience: "The black pale on a silver field proclaims the Prince of Epirus. The red bend on the gold enriched with three laurel wreaths on the field is the bearing of Andronicus Palæologus, who longs to wear the imperial laurels of Constantinople. The six gold lozenges on purple are the arms of Sir Jaufre de Brabant. The three boars' heads of silver on the black field assert Sir Ambrose of Blois. The golden stag at gaze on a green field stands for Sir Raymond of Provence. The golden dolphin on the orange field represents Sir Guy de Hainault. The shield divided per pale green and silver and charged with a scarlet castle, from whose summit emerges a black dragon, belongs to Fernand Ximenes, the aspiring Spaniard." Only one cognizance baffled the garrulity of Captain Fox that day. There was a shield bearing a golden acorn on a green field that was as unfamiliar to him as to his hearers. So he looked mighty wise, gabbled some patter about mysteries that might not be revealed, and went on to explain, what every one of course knew, that Prince Rainouart carried a golden shield with no charge upon it, and that the lord-marshal, Count Ernault, carried potent blue and silver. Of many another knight that day, of many more armorial bearings, Captain Fox discoursed learnedly enough to such as would listen to him, and generally succeeded while his tongue wagged in impoverishing his hearers of some jewel, purse, or button, dexterously nipped by his thievish fingers. But at least the plundered person, when he discovered his loss and Captain Fox had vanished into the sea of human beings, might console himself with the reflection that he had moved, as it were, for a season in a kind of intimacy with the great, and that this pleasure, like all others, had to be paid for.