The remark caught had not been ill-natured, was more jocose than turbulent, might pass where any freedom of speech was accorded. But suddenly came clearly from the bough of the plane tree a genuinely seditious utterance. Given forth in a round, naturally sonorous voice, it carried further than the speaker intended. “_One day a burgher will be as good as a duke!_” The great folk were almost beneath that wide-spreading bough. They looked sharply up—the duke, Stephen the Marshal, all the knights. The voice said on, like an oracle aloft among the leaves: “The man in my skin isn’t any less than the man in his skin. I say that one day—” A branch that had served to steady the oracle suddenly broke, snapping short. Amid ejaculations, oracle and branch came together to earth. Down they tumbled, on the inner side of the barrier, upon the grassy path before the duke and Stephen the Marshal. Laughter arose with, on the knights’ side, some angry exclamation. The fallen man got hastily to his feet. “The branch was rotten—” He put a hand to either side his head, seemed to settle it upon his shoulders and recover his wits. “Give me pardon, good lords, for tumbling there like a pippin—” He was a young man, square-shouldered and sturdy, with crisply curling black hair, a determined mouth, and black, bold, and merry eyes. Stephen the Marshal spoke sternly. “That bough brought you to earth, Thibaut Canteleu, but, an you rein it not, your tongue will bring you into earth!” The offender turned his cap in his hand. “I spoke not to be heard by great lords,” he said. “I know not that I said harm. I said that, change my lord duke and me, and I might make a fair duke, and he a fair master-saddler and worker in Cordovan! I think that he might, and I will tell you that it taketh skill—” The duke saw fit to laugh, though after an irritated and peevish fashion. “Roche-de-Frêne,” he said, “breeds fair princesses and townsmen with limber tongues!—Well, my Lord Stephen, let us not tarry here!” Lords and knights passed on toward the pavilions. Thibaut Canteleu, pressed aside, stood close to the barrier until they were gone, then put his hands upon the rail and swung himself up and over. The folk, men and women, received him with laughter, and some admiration, and he laughed at himself. Being a holiday, that was the best thing to do. A jongleur, a dark Moorish-looking fellow in yellow and brown, accosted him. “Thou poor mad-house citizen! Burgher and knight, lion and lamb, priest and heretic, pope and paynim, villein and lord, jongleur and troubadour, Jean and Jeanne, let us all go to heaven together!” “We might,” answered Thibaut Canteleu sturdily. “That is a fine lute of thine! Play us a tune while we wait.” “Not I!” said the jongleur coolly. “It would demean me. Last night I gave a turn of my art in the hall up yonder, before the prince and all his court.—Who is this coming now, with a green-and-silver banner and fifty men behind him?”