the King rewarded the two commissioners. He made Louis d’Amboise,
Bishop of Albi; and to Pierre de Sacierges he gave a sinecure post of
great value. Therewith the examination was at an end, and Louis, at his
next _tête-à-tête_ with the Holy Virgin of Clery, probably talked like
a man who had been wronged by false suspicion, and had come cleverly,
if not triumphantly, out of a trying ordeal.
Having mentioned the great Duke of Burgundy, I may here appropriately
add a word or two of the famous “Le Glorieux,” the French jester to
Charles the Bold. Le Glorieux was a facetious fellow, and as fearless
as facetious. His master, Duke Charles, used to compare himself with
Hannibal. After the overthrow at Granson, Duke and fool were galloping
in search of safety, with many others. The Duke was in gloomy wrath, Le
Glorieux was full of wicked gaiety. “Uncle,” cried he to Charles, “this
is the prettiest way of being like Hannibal that I ever saw.”
So again, subsequently to the defeat sustained by the Duke before
Beauvais, Charles was conducting some ambassadors over his arsenal. In
one of the rooms the host remarked, “This chamber contains the keys of
all the cities in France.” At these words, Le Glorieux began fumbling
in his pockets, and looking about the room with an air of anxiety.
“Now, ass,” cried the Duke, “what are you searching for so anxiously?”
“I am looking,” answered Le Glorieux, with a significant smile,--“I am
looking for the keys of Beauvais.”
A lost battle would seem, indeed, to have always heightened the spirits
of the licensed fool. We have another instance in the case of the
jester of the Marquis del Guasto, a general in the service of Charles
V. While his captors were hauling over his baggage, after the day of
Cerizoles, his fool exclaimed, “Ay, ay, you will find all sorts of
valuable things there, except spurs, of which truly my master has
plenty, but he keeps them all to enable him to get quicker out of the
fray.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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