ing his supper; and so fulfilled the human precept, "Soyez de votre
siecle!"

In this emergency the seneschal cast his despairing eyes around; and not
in vain. A hopeful light shot into them.

"Here is this," said he, sotto voce. "Surely this will serve: 'tis
altogether apelike, doublet and hose apart."

"Nay," said the chancellor peevishly, "the Princess Marie would hang us.
She doteth on this."

Now this was our friend Giles, strutting, all unconscious, in cloth of
gold.

Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog.

"A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour."

So they flayed a liver-coloured dog, and clapped it, yet palpitating, to
their sovereign's breast and he died.

Philip the Good, thus scientifically disposed of, left thirty-one
children: of whom one, somehow or another, was legitimate; and reigned
in his stead.

The good duke provided for nineteen out of the other thirty; the rest
shifted for themselves.

According to the Flemish chronicle the deceased prince was descended
from the kings of Troy through Thierry of Aquitaine, and Chilperic,
Pharamond, etc., the old kings of Franconia.

But this in reality was no distinction. Not a prince of his day have
I been able to discover who did not come down from Troy. "Priam" was
mediaeval for "Adam."

The good duke's, body was carried into Burgundy, and laid in a noble
mausoleum of black marble at Dijon.

Holland rang with his death; and little dreamed that anything as
famous was born in her territory that year. That judgment has been long
reversed. Men gaze at the tailor's house, here the great birth of the
fifteenth century took place. In what house the good duke died "no one
knows and no one cares," as the song says.

And why?

Dukes Philip the Good come and go, and leave mankind not a halfpenny
wiser, nor better, nor other than they found it.

But when, once in three hundred years, such a child is born to the world
as Margaret's son, lo! a human torch lighted by fire from heaven; and
"FIAT LUX" thunder's from pole to pole.

CHAPTER LXXII

The Cloister

The Dominicans, or preaching friars, once the most powerful order in
Europe, were now on the wane; their rivals and bitter enemies, the
Franciscans, were overpowering them throughout Europe; even in England,
a rich and religious country, where under the name of the Black Friars,
they had once been paramount.

Therefore the sagacious men, who watched