Kitabı oku: «The Court Jester», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XII
AN AUSTRIAN PRINCESS AT THE SPANISH COURT

Up from the south came the young Prince of the Asturias to meet his Austrian bride. His greeting was in accordance with the strictest rules of Spanish etiquette, but all were favorably impressed by his gracious affability and by the gentle dignity of his manner.

Under the eye of his thoughtful mother, this prince had been carefully educated to be the ruler of his country. As a child he was attended by pages of his own age, and they formed mimic councils and played at being grown-up rulers. He had been taught fencing by a celebrated swordsman, and at night his sword always hung at the head of his bed. When only twelve years of age he had been knighted on the battlefield by King Ferdinand, his father. He could paint and draw, and he could play on several different instruments, for Queen Isabella was determined that her son should be one of the most accomplished princes of his time.

The prince was accompanied by his royal father, and the Lady Marguerite and her suite were escorted in great state to the old city of Burgos. Here they were met by the queen and the Spanish court.

The steed ridden by Queen Isabella was covered with crimson cloth richly embroidered with gold. Her saddle was like a chair of state, and she seemed as if seated on a moving throne. She was still a handsome woman, with gold-tinted hair and soft, earnest eyes. Following her, and mounted on richly-caparisoned mules, were scores of court ladies who seemed to have competed with each other in the magnificence of their costumes. With other high dignitaries of the church came the queen's confessor, Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo. This stern man was clothed in all the splendor of his office, but underneath these elegant robes, we are told, was haircloth which scraped his flesh, already bruised by the frequent beatings which he gave himself with a whip.

History tells us that Queen Isabella had taken great pains to arrange the meeting of the royal family with the Austrian princess, and that she had planned just who was to kiss and who was to embrace the young stranger, but however this may be, the ceremony passed off in a satisfactory manner, and the Lady Marguerite was quite charmed with her new mother.

Never had preparations so grand been made for royal nuptials as were arranged for the wedding of the Prince of the Asturias with the Lady Marguerite of Hapsburg. There were present grandees representing the chivalry of Spain, men who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield and in the tournament; there were ambassadors from the courts of all the civilized world; there were dignitaries from all the cities of Spain, there were great ladies in glittering apparel, and the king and queen in their mantles of state; but most interesting of all was the young prince, whom his people already loved, and his fair young bride.

Dressed in his gayest suit, Le Glorieux stood where he could obtain the best view of his young mistress. At the most interesting moment, just as the ceremony was about to begin, there was a buzz of excitement around him, and Don Geronimo whispered in his ear, "Will you stand aside? I am looking for the pomander-box of Doña Clotilde, which has dropped to the floor." But the fool folded his arms and pretended not to hear.

And then followed days of fêtes and tourneys and tilts. The Spanish people enjoyed these amusements in a dignified and even a serious manner, and when the princess and her suite laughed and clapped their hands at some particularly clever feat, the courtiers of Ferdinand and Isabella were shocked at such levity.

When the public rejoicings were over the prince and princess went to their palace at Salamanca, a city of beautiful creamy stone, built on three hills and in a horse-shoe shape, which, with its stately college of seventeen thousand students, gave many fêtes and outdid itself in bull-fights to celebrate the coming of the youthful pair.

It is said that one of the first acts of Prince Juan was to engage professors and performers of music, both instrumental and vocal, who, with fiddles, organs, cymbals, hautboys, and other instruments, played the lively airs of Spain. He also had a large military band, and one afternoon when Le Glorieux was lounging in the window listening to its music, the princess entered the room. She wore a splendid gown with a very long train, and she looked quite tall and stately. It was the first time the jester had seen her alone since their arrival in this country, and he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "Little Cousin – " just as he had addressed her since the beginning of their acquaintance. But the Princess of the Asturias held her head higher and eyed him coldly, without making a reply.

Very much chagrined at this treatment, for she ever had been most gracious in her manner toward him, the fool turned and was about to leave the room without another word, when he was startled by a merry laugh.

"Did I do it well?" she asked gayly.

"You did it too well! I was already homesick, and if you had turned to ice like the people of this country, I should have been broken-hearted. Never was there a place so stiff and cold as this Spanish court. The king is shorter than the queen and is not very big to look at when you come to stature, but I would no more think of jesting with him, as I always did with Max, than I would think of sitting down to have a little fun with my grandmother's tomb. And I am not a man who is easily chilled, either!"

"I am told," said the princess, "that I am too careless and gay, and that I must be like the ladies of Spain. And although I am allowed to retain my own people about me, they must all conduct themselves in a grave and ceremonious manner."

"Thank fortune that I am a fool," said Le Glorieux, "for who ever heard of a jester who was grave and ceremonious? But I shall be sad and mournful, my Princess, if you freeze up as you did just now, and continue to stay frozen."

"I must try to please my husband's people," replied Marguerite seriously. "If I am one day to be Queen of Spain I must learn to be like a Spanish woman. And I hope that my own people will not offend by showing too much levity and frivolity."

"One of your suite has become a thorough Spaniard," said Le Glorieux, "and that is Brutus. He follows the prince everywhere."

"Yes," replied Marguerite, "the prince loves him and Brutus is fond of his new master. In this he shows good judgment, for the prince is very, very good."

The princess sighed as she spoke and gazed dreamily out of the window. "I wonder if she, too, is homesick," thought the jester. "Well, as for me, I have seen the bull-fights, the flowers, and oranges of Spain, and I wish I could take my little princess and go home to Max."

From the window they could see Prince Juan walking in the garden, and by his side stepped Brutus, the master occasionally pausing to pat the dog's head or to stroke his silky ears. "He is a good man," remarked the jester, "or Brutus would not be so fond of him."

Now the prince took a seat on a marble bench beside the fountain and turned his pale face, with its thoughtful brow, toward the sinking sun, still absently drawing the hound's ears through his thin white fingers. "I said something to him this morning that used to make the emperor laugh, but the prince only smiled in that far-off way, as if his mind were traveling through the moon," said Le Glorieux. "He is younger than Philibert, and Philibert is always ready to laugh. And how cheerful and gay Max always was, though sometimes – "

"Do not, oh, do not!" cried the princess. "Let us not talk of my father, or any of the people at home! I am going to weep; I shall be as tearful as poor Cunegunda," she went on, half-laughing, as she brushed the tears from her eyes. "What would her Majesty, Queen Isabella, say were she to see me weeping with my jester – she who always is so careful never to betray her emotions, and who, even when she is ill, never utters a moan? The prince will come soon and we are to give an audience to some persons of distinction, and it will not do for me to be seen with swollen eyes."

"There, there," said the jester, taking her handkerchief and wiping her eyes as if she had been a little child. "Your lashes are long and thick, you see, and the tears hang to them and make them seem like more tears than they really are. They will spoil your pretty eyes. And you are not really sad, you know, for why should you be, when you will one day be queen of one of the great nations of the earth?"

"Somehow I do not care about that part of it, Le Glorieux, and I hope King Ferdinand and dear Queen Isabella will live to be very, very old. But I can be dignified when I like, can I not, Le Glorieux?"

"Most certainly you can, my little lady. That night when you were brought a prisoner before Anne of Brittany you were as dignified as a woman of forty."

"And as I grow older it will be easier for me to be silent and cold. I am only sixteen now."

"Of course it will be. The older people grow, the more silent and cold they are. That is to say, as a rule. Clotilde, now, is old and cold, but she is not always silent. There you are smiling, and your tears are all gone; do not get into the habit of weeping. As I understand it, you are expected neither to smile nor weep, but get into a humor half-way between the two and you will be just right."

"Le Glorieux," said the princess, "if you are not happy in Spain, there is no reason why you should stay here. I will send you home to my father, who will be glad to have you with him. You have plenty of friends there and you will be contented."

"And you would be willing to have me go, you could spare me, little Cousin?" asked the fool sadly.

"I am not thinking of myself. I should miss you sorely. But I want you to live where you will be happiest."

"Then that will be where you are, little Princess. No matter if Ferdinand commands me to be as sour and grave as one of the dried-up professors in the university, here do I remain."

Prince Juan entered. He bent gracefully and pressed Marguerite's fingers to his lips, then he offered his arm, and thus they left the room.

The jester wandered to the garden, where he remained for a long time on the seat vacated by the prince. He plucked a branch of pomegranate blossoms and fastened it to the front of his yellow coat. "Bright colors help to make one cheerful," murmured he, and rising, he went down to the river, and leaning over the old stone bridge, he looked into the dingy waters. "They tell me that the waters of the Tormes River will make one forget all he knows if he drinks of them," thought the fool. "They have a saying here if any one forgets anything, 'He has been drinking of the waters of the Tormes.'" Twilight had closed in around him when he became conscious of some one standing beside him. It was a tall man in a long black cloak, and wearing a tall pointed black hat. He was very thin and his small eyes were like black beads.

"You were gazing into the waters of the Tormes, Señor," said the stranger, in a melancholy voice.

"If you are telling me that as a piece of news you must not mind if I am not surprised at it," replied the fool.

"Do you know the effect produced upon those who drink of this water, Señor?" asked the stranger, ignoring the flippancy of the jester's reply.

"Judging from the color of the water, I should say the effect would be gritty," replied Le Glorieux.

"They are the waters of oblivion," went on the tall man; "those who drink of them forget all they know."

"That would not be a great effort for some people," said Le Glorieux.

"One cup of this water and the past is completely forgotten," repeated the stranger.

"Some people might be glad to forget their past," remarked the fool.

"But all wisdom is forgotten, too," the tall man urged in reply.

"Have you tried it?"

Without noticing the rather uncomplimentary character of this question, the stranger clutched the lower corner of his long mantle in his hand and folding his arms looked down into the river for a few minutes before he replied, "No, I have not tasted of these waters, for I need all of my wisdom. I am the most learned doctor of all the learned ones in the University of Salamanca."

"Retiring and modest of you to say so," replied the jester.

"The whole world has heard of Don Velerio de Farrapos," said that gentleman.

"Then I do not live in the world, for this is the first time I have heard that name."

"Do not lie to me," said the other, frowning, "you have heard it."

"Very well, if you insist upon it," said Le Glorieux. "In order to be easy and comfortable together, we will say that my father had a black cat of that name. But do not ask me to remember it, if you please. I already have the name of one Spaniard fixed in my mind, and I am not going to have it crowded out by yours. But what have you done that makes you talked about by all the world?"

"I have made a great discovery."

"What is it?"

"The elixir of life."

"You do not mean it?"

"The savants of the Orient," went on the Spaniard, "claimed that there are one hundred and one ways in which a man may lose his life. He may die by poison, by drowning, bad living, a stroke of lightning, or in ninety-six other ways. But if he dies before he is one hundred years old, it is the result of accident, or of his own ignorance or wilfulness. So you see it is not so very easy to die, when all is said and done."

"But you can not convince people of that; they will keep on dying," said the fool.

"But they need not, now that I have discovered the elixir of life," replied Don Velerio, in a deep voice.

Le Glorieux now surveyed him with a feeling of awe. Men were searching at this very time for the elixir of life, and why should it not have been discovered by this learned doctor of Salamanca?

"It is only necessary to take it once in fifty years," observed Don Velerio carelessly.

"That seems a long while between doses," responded the fool. "But while you are about it, I should think you would add something to the medicine to put flesh on your bones," he continued, looking at Don Velerio's thin legs, which, clad in black hose, looked like slender iron rods.

"Flesh," said the learned man, "is nothing."

"It certainly is not much in your case," returned the jester.

"But life, life is everything," went on Don Velerio, waving the hand which still clutched the corner of the mantle, a gesture which gave him the appearance of a large bat. "I expect to live to the age of five thousand five hundred and fifty-seven years," said he.

"I am afraid you are just a trifle ambitious," said the jester.

"The composition of my elixir is a great secret," said the Spaniard. "It is made from serpents' broth," and he raised his voice exultantly.

"It must be a great secret since you bawl it out like that." Le Glorieux had now lost all faith in the wisdom of this "learned doctor."

"He doubts me! He dares to doubt me!" cried Don Velerio, in a shrill voice, and before he had time to realize what was happening, the jester was pushed over the low balustrade of the bridge and into the dark waters below, where he fell with a loud splash.

This piece of treachery on the part of Don Velerio would not have been a very serious matter, for the jester was a good swimmer, had not the victim of it struck an abutment of the bridge as he went down, which stunned him and prevented him from making any effort to save himself. He would have drowned had not two men in a rowboat not far away succeeded in dragging the unconscious fool into their boat.

When he returned to his senses he was in his own room, and a nun, with a kind and gentle face, was sitting beside him.

"Why do you come here to watch me sleep?" he asked, and was surprised to find that his voice was so weak.

"You must be quiet; you have been very ill," said she.

"I ill? Now that is a queer thing, a very queer thing! What made me ill?"

"Do not trouble your head about it. It is best for you to remain perfectly silent."

"I will not be quiet until you have answered my questions. If anybody ought to be interested in this affair, it seems to me I ought to be the one."

The nun reflected a moment, then she said thoughtfully, "Perhaps it might be better to tell you, after all. You fell off of the bridge into the river. You were saved by two boatmen, but you seemed to be in a stupor."

"I remember all about it now," cried the jester. "It was that old black spider of a doctor who pushed me in. Let me up and I will break every bone in his body!"

The sister put her hand to his breast and pushed him back to his pillow again, and he was astonished to find how easily this delicate woman could manage him. "You must not grow excited," she said gently.

"He came there and talked to me about his old elixir of life," said Le Glorieux. "Did it of his own accord; I never invited him; then he said I doubted him, which I did, and he pushed me over."

"Don Velerio is very sensitive about his discovery," said the nun, "but he did not intend really to harm you."

"He did a queer thing for a man who did not intend anything by it."

"Don Velerio is flighty at times, and he was sorry for what he had done. He has sent you a vial of his elixir of life."

"Send it straight back to him and tell him, with my compliments, to take it himself and see if it will make him – "

The door opened before he had finished the sentence, and the princess entered, followed by a page who bore a torch to light the way along the corridors. She was dressed as if for a grand fête. A coronet rested on her hair, gems flashed about her throat, her arms, and her slender waist. In all her gorgeous array she knelt on the floor and took in both her own the hand of the jester.

"Little Cousin," said he.

"Oh, he is conscious!" she cried. "I am so rejoiced to know it! Now you are going to recover right away, are you not, my poor Le Glorieux?"

"The sight of you, as you look now, ought to make even the broken statue of a man pull himself together," he replied, smiling faintly.

"Oh, it is so good to hear you talk," she exclaimed, laughing, though her eyes were full of tears.

"I did not know that it was so strange a thing to hear me talk," said he.

"Why, you have not said one word for more than two weeks!" she said impulsively. "But perhaps I ought not to have told you."

"I did not think it best to tell the patient too much, your Highness," said the nun almost reproachfully. "He seemed so anxious to talk that I allowed him to ask some questions, but I was just about to bid him be quiet when your gracious Highness entered the room."

"I am always blundering, even with you, Le Glorieux," said the princess, rising, "but now I will go. Try to sleep, try to get well as soon as possible. And now good-by for the present." She smiled down upon him, took her long train over her arm, and motioning to the page to open the door, went from the room.

"She is a great princess; she is the future Queen of Spain, yet she does not forget the poor jester," murmured the sick man, while to himself his words sounded as if they had been uttered by some one else and he seemed to sail away into a silent sea.

When he once more became conscious the bright sun was streaming in at the open window, and standing beside his bed and looking down at him with coldly blinking eyes, was the Lady Clotilde.

"I thought I had died and gone to Heaven," said the jester weakly, "but this is only purgatory."

"I do not know that you ought to talk," said the Lady Clotilde. "I wish you had not returned to consciousness while Sister Barbara is out. I never know what to do with sick people."

"I have been talking all my life, and it has not killed me yet," said the jester.

"I came on behalf of her Highness, the Princess of the Asturias," said the Lady Clotilde. "Not being able to come in person, she sent me to see that you were well cared for and had everything that you needed."

"She was here last night," said he; "she said she was so glad to hear me talk again."

"Oh, that was some time ago. She has been here since, but you did not recognize her. You have been raving with fever for six weeks."

"Fever?" he asked, considerably puzzled. "Why, I thought I was pushed over a bridge."

"And so you were, but it terminated in a fever. The leeches do not know whether the accident brought on the fever, or whether the malady was already in your system. They have had several consultations about it."

"I do not see the sense of consulting about a thing like that. What difference does it make what gave me the fever, since it is very evident that I have it? How long have I been here altogether?"

"Just eight weeks ago this night, for I remember I ordered a gown from the best tailor of Salamanca, and he promised it in a week, and it has not come yet, and it was the night of your accident, for I heard about it just as the tailor was leaving the palace, where he had come to take my order. Eight weeks, think of it, and that gown no nearer finished, I will warrant, than it was the day it was fitted! These Spanish tradesmen are the slowest people in this world." And the Lady Clotilde became very much excited about her wrongs.

"Well, I think that your situation was better than mine during those eight weeks," said the jester, "but I dare say I was in no higher fever than you were throughout that time. I do not suppose I have missed anything by being ill, except, perhaps, several dozen bull-fights. I would I were back in Vienna again," he continued, with a sigh.

"Vienna? I would not return there for the world," said the lady. "The climate of Spain is simply glorious."

"I am not especially fond of climate by itself," said the fool.

"I really do think you ought not to talk," said the Lady Clotilde. "I do wish you had not returned to consciousness while Sister Barbara is out."

"You said that before," said the fool fretfully. "Why would it not be just as easy to wish that Sister Barbara had been in when I did return to consciousness?"

"I see that you are inclined to be captious," returned the Lady Clotilde calmly. "They say Prince Juan is like an angel."

"What has that to do with me?" asked Le Glorieux wearily. "He is not a near relative of mine."

"I forgot that you were ignorant of the fact that his Highness is very, very ill."

"Ill? His Highness ill?"

"Yes, he also has the fever, the same that you have, but the leeches are confident that they can cure him."

The fever had now spent itself, and Le Glorieux, being naturally of a strong constitution, made rapid progress toward recovery. Marguerite came no more, for every moment was spent beside the couch of the prince, who was making a brave fight for his life.

But one morning the bells began to toll, and it seemed as if a pall had settled over the land, for the Prince of the Asturias, the hope of Spain, was no more! The heir to the throne of a great kingdom had bowed his young head meekly to the divine will, and gladly had exchanged the splendors of earth for the joys of Heaven. History says, "All the nations mourned, and the court, instead of being hung with white serge, was draped in sackcloth… Brutus, a beautiful hound belonging to the prince, could not be induced to leave his body, but went to his tomb and died there."

It was a pale and sorrowful queen whom Le Glorieux beheld when next he went to court. The fairy-like columns and sparkling fountains of her palaces were no longer a delight to Queen Isabella; for her the roses in the Alhambra gardens had lost their fragrance, and she thought with indifference of her new possessions across the sea, for she had lost the dearest treasure of all, and the great queen had become the sorrowing mother.