in the career of a passion which
overleaped ceremony, that he could only reply by repetition of the words
"Booted Head! It is impossible that my master the Duke could have so
termed the servant who has been at his side since he could mount a
palfrey--and that too before a foreign monarch!--it is impossible!"

Louis instantly saw the impression he had made, and avoiding alike
a tone of condolence, which might have seemed insulting, and one of
sympathy, which might have savoured of affectation; he said, with
simplicity, and at the same time with dignity, "My misfortunes make
me forget my courtesy, else I had not spoken to you of what it must be
unpleasant for you to hear. But you have in reply taxed me with having
uttered impossibilities--this touches my honour; yet I must submit to
the charge, if I tell you not the circumstances which the Duke, laughing
until his eyes ran over, assigned for the origin of that opprobrious
name, which I will not offend your ears by repeating. Thus, then, it
chanced. You, Sir Philip de Comines, were at a hunting match with the
Duke of Burgundy, your master; and when he alighted after the chase, he
required your services in drawing off his boots. Reading in your looks,
perhaps, some natural resentment of this disparaging treatment, he
ordered you to sit down in turn, and rendered you the same office he
had just received from you. But offended at your understanding him
literally, he no sooner plucked one of your boots off than he brutally
beat it about your head till the blood flowed, exclaiming against the
insolence of a subject who had the presumption to accept of such a
service at the hand of his Sovereign; and hence he, or his privileged
fool, Le Glorieux, is in the current habit of distinguishing you by the
absurd and ridiculous name of Tete botte, which makes one of the Duke's
most ordinary subjects of pleasantry."

[The story is told more bluntly, and less probably, in the French
memoirs of the period, which affirm that Comines, out of a presumption
inconsistent with his excellent good sense, had asked of Charles of
Burgundy to draw off his boots, without having been treated with any
previous familiarity to lead to such a freedom. I have endeavoured to
give the anecdote a turn more consistent with the sense and prudence of
the great author concerned. S.]

While Louis thus spoke, he had the double pleasure of galling to the
quick the person whom he addressed--an exercise which it was