Part 115 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+fted for themselves.

According to the Flemish chronicle the deceased prince was descended from the kings of Troy through Thierry of Aquitaine, and Chilperic, Pharamond, &c., 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 n.o.ble 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, where 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”

thunders from pole to pole.

CHAPTER LXXIV

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 and directed the interests of the order, were never so anxious to incorporate able and zealous sons, and send them forth to win back the world.

The zeal and accomplishments of Clement, especially his rare mastery of language (for he spoke Latin, Italian, French, high and low Dutch) soon transpired, and he was destined to travel and preach in England, corresponding with the Roman centre.

But Jerome, who had the superior's ear, obstructed this design.

”Clement,” said he, ”has the milk of the world still in his veins, its feelings, its weaknesses; let not his new-born zeal and his humility tempt us to forego our ancient wisdom. Try him first, and temper him, lest one day we find ourselves leaning on a reed for a staff.”

”It is well advised,” said the prior. ”Take him in hand thyself.”

Then Jerome, following the ancient wisdom, took Clement and tried him.

One day he brought him to a field where the young men amused themselves at the games of the day; he knew this to be a haunt of Clement's late friends.

And sure enough ere long Pietro Vanucci and Andrea pa.s.sed by them, and cast a careless glance on the two friars. They did not recognize their dead friend in a shaven monk.