ht,
So, thanking him, declined the hunting-- 290
Was conduct ever more affronting?
With all the ceremony settled--
With the towel ready, and the sewer
Polishing up his oldest ewer,
And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald, 295
Black-barred, cream-coated, and pink eye-balled--
No wonder if the Duke was nettled!
And when she persisted nevertheless--
Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady's chamber 300
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth, the tire-woman, ready in waiting,
Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant; 305
And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother, 310
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened through all its quince-tinct. 315
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she?--Who was she?--Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation--
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free 320
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed; 325
And after her--making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase--oh, such a solemn 330
Unbending of the vertebral column!

XII

However, at sunrise our company mustered;
And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel; 335
For the