's court as soon as his heir was born, and
died there,

"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamber next to an ante-room
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they perfume."

The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took the boy to Paris, where she
belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So
the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were
railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years
were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."

"And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
--Not he!"

--for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue,
and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one
good thing left in these evil days:

"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."

It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages
were revived:

"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."

The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its
origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs
and length, all speed, no strength:

"They should have set him on red Berold,
Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"

Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He
preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty
Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in
the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.

"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady in time of spring.
--Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"

Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad
in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:

"And so we saw the lady arrive;
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of Nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for th