his external
appearance.

"Ay, sir, and like your learning," answered Le Glorieux. "When Power
sends Folly to entreat the approach of Wisdom, 't is a sure sign what
foot the patient halts upon."

"How if I refuse to come, when summoned at so late an hour by such a
messenger?" said Galeotti.

"In that case, we will consult your ease, and carry you," said Le
Glorieux. "Here are half a score of stout Burgundian yeomen at the door,
with whom He of Crevecoeur has furnished me to that effect. For know
that my friend Charles of Burgundy and I have not taken away our kinsman
Louis's crown, which he was ass enough to put into our power, but have
only filed and clipt it a little, and, though reduced to the size of a
spangle, it is still pure gold. In plain terms, he is still paramount
over his own people, yourself included, and Most Christian King of the
old dining hall in the Castle of Peronne, to which you, as his liege
subject, are presently obliged to repair."

"I attend you, sir," said Martius Galeotti, and accompanied Le Glorieux
accordingly--seeing, perhaps, that no evasion was possible.

"Ay, sir," said the Fool, as they went towards the Castle, "you do well;
for we treat our kinsman as men use an old famished lion in his cage,
and thrust him now and then a calf to mumble, to keep his old jaws in
exercise."

"Do you mean," said Martius, "that the King intends me bodily injury?"

"Nay, that you can guess better than I," said the jester; "for though
the night be cloudy, I warrant you can see the stars through the mist.
I know nothing of the matter, not I--only my mother always told me to go
warily near an old rat in a trap, for he was never so much disposed to
bite."

The Astrologer asked no more questions, and Le Glorieux, according to
the custom of those of his class, continued to run on in a wild and
disordered strain of sarcasm and folly mingled together, until he
delivered the philosopher to the guard at the Castle gate of Peronne,
where he was passed from warder to warder, and at length admitted within
Herbert's Tower.

The hints of the jester had not been lost on Martius Galeotti, and he
saw something which seemed to confirm them in the look and manner of
Tristan, whose mode of addressing him, as he marshalled him to the
King's bedchamber, was lowering, sullen, and ominous. A close observer
of what passed on earth, as well as among the heavenly bodies, the
pulley and the rope also caught the Astrologer's