ht of common men! and know that Riczi is
avenged,--you milliner!"

[Illustration: "'TAKE NOW YOUR PETTY VENGEANCE!'" _Painting by
Elisabeth Shippen Green_]

"Into England I came desiring vengeance--Apples of Sodom! O bitter
fruit!" the Vicomte thought; "O fitting harvest of a fool's assiduous
husbandry!"

They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long meditation, the
Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a fresh and private audience of King
Henry, and readily obtained it. "Unhardy is unseely," the Vicomte said
at its conclusion. Then the tale tells that the Vicomte returned to
France and within this realm assembled all such lords as the abuses of
the Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously dissatified.

The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and now,
so great was the devotion of love's dupe, so heartily, so hastily, did
he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, that now his
eloquence was twin to Belial's.

Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as had the
Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Latterly Jehan Sans-Peur was
slain at Montereau; and a little later the new Duke of Burgundy, who
loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, had shifted his coat.
Afterward fell the poised scale of circumstance, and with an aweful
clangor; and now in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte
de Montbrison as they would of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every
market-place was King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm.

Meantime was Queen Jehane conveyed to prison and lodged therein for
five years' space. She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled,
and of two scantily furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured
females Pelham had provided for the Queen's attendance might speak to
her of nothing that occurred without the gates of Pevensey, and she saw
no other persons save her confessor, a triple-chinned Dominican; and in
fine, had they already lain Jehane within the massive and gilded coffin
of a queen the outer world would have made as great a turbulence in her
ears.

But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew, and
about vespers--for thus it wonderfully fell out--one of those grim
attendants brought to her the first man, save the fat confessor, whom
the Queen had seen within five years. The proud, frail woman looked
and what she saw was the common inhabitant of all her dreams.

Said Jehane: "This is ill done. The yea