"Add whatever else on my part," said Charles, "which it may not misbecome a prince to send to a common thief, and murderer. – And begone! – Yet stay. – Never herald went from the Court of Burgundy without having cause to cry, Largesse! – Let him be scourged till the bones are laid bare!"
"Nay, but if it please your Grace," said Crèvecoeur and D'Hymbercourt together, "he is a herald, and so far privileged."
"It is you, Messires," replied the Duke, "who are such owls, as to think that the tabard makes the herald. I see by that fellow's blazoning he is a mere impostor. Let Toison d'Or step forward, and question him in your presence."
In spite of his natural effrontery, the envoy of the Wild Boar of Ardennes now became pale; and that notwithstanding some touches of paint with which he had adorned his countenance. Toison d'Or, the chief herald, as we have elsewhere said, of the Duke, and King-at-arms within his dominions, stepped forward with the solemnity of one who knew what was due to his office, and asked his supposed brother, in what College he had studied the science which he professed.
"I was bred a pursuivant at the Heraldic College of Ratisbon," answered Rouge Sanglier, "and received the diploma of Ehrenhold from that same learned fraternity."
"You could not derive it from a source more worthy," answered Toison d'Or, bowing still lower than he had done before; "and if I presume to confer with you on the mysteries of our sublime science, in obedience to the orders of the most gracious Duke, it is not in hopes of giving, but of receiving knowledge."
"Go to," said the Duke, impatiently. "Leave off ceremony, and ask him some question that may try his skill."
"It were injustice to ask a disciple of the worthy College of Arms at Ratisbon, if he comprehendeth the common terms of blazonry," said Toison d'Or; "but I may, without offence, crave of Rouge Sanglier to say, if he is instructed in the more mysterious and secret terms of the science, by which the more learned do emblematically, and as it were parabolically, express to each other what is conveyed to others in the ordinary language, taught in the very accidence as it were of Heraldry?"
"I understand one sort of blazonry as well as another," answered Rouge Sanglier, boldly; "but it may be we have not the same terms in Germany which you have here in Flanders."
"Alas, that you will say so!" replied Toison d'Or; "our noble science, which is indeed the very banner of nobleness, and glory of generosity, being the same in all Christian countries, nay, known and acknowledged even by the Saracens and Moors. I would, therefore, pray of you to describe what coat you will after the celestial fashion, that is, by the planets."
"Blazon it yourself as you will," said Rouge Sanglier; "I will do no such apish tricks upon commandment, as an ape is made to come aloft."
"Show him a coat, and let him blazon it his own way," said the Duke; "and if he fails, I promise him that his back shall be gules, azure, and sable."
"Here," said the herald of Burgundy, taking from his pouch a piece of parchment, "is a scroll, in which certain considerations led me to prick down, after my own poor fashion, an ancient coat. I will pray my brother, if indeed he belong to the honourable College of Arms at Ratisbon, to decipher it in fitting language."
Le Glorieux, who seemed to take great pleasure in this discussion, had by this time bustled himself close up to the two heralds. "I will help thee, good fellow," said he to Rouge Sanglier, as he looked hopelessly upon the scroll. "This, my lords and masters, represents the cat looking out at the dairy-window."
This sally occasioned a laugh, which was something to the advantage of Rouge Sanglier, as it led Toison d'Or, indignant at the misconstruction of his drawing, to explain it as the coat-of-arms assumed by Childebert, King of France, after he had taken prisoner Gandemar, King of Burgundy; representing an ounce, or tiger-cat, the emblem of the captive prince, behind a grating, or, as Toison d'Or technically defined it, "Sable, a musion passant Or, oppressed with a trellis gules, cloué of the second."
"By my bauble," said Le Glorieux, "if the cat resemble Burgundy, she has the right side of the grating now-a-days."
"True, good fellow," said Louis, laughing, while the rest of the presence, and even Charles himself, seemed disconcerted at so broad a jest, – "I owe thee a piece of gold for turning something that looked like sad earnest, into the merry game which I trust it will end in."
"Silence, Le Glorieux," said the Duke; "and you, Toison d'Or, who are too learned to be intelligible, stand back, – and bring that rascal forward, some of you. – Hark ye, villain," he said, in his harshest tone, "do you know the difference between argent and or, except in the shape of coined money?"
"For pity's sake, your Grace, be good unto me! – Noble King Louis, speak for me!"
"Speak for thyself," said the Duke – "In a word, art thou herald or not?"
"Only for this occasion!" acknowledged the detected official.
"Now, by St George!" said the Duke, eyeing Louis askance, "we know no king – no gentleman – save one, who would have so prostituted the noble science on which royalty and gentry rest! save that King, who sent to Edward of England a serving man disguised as a herald[57]."
"Such a stratagem," said Louis, laughing or affecting to laugh, "could only be justified at a Court where no heralds were at the time, and when the emergency was urgent. But, though it might have passed on the blunt and thick-witted islander, no one with brains a whit better than those of a wild boar would have thought of passing such a trick upon the accomplished Court of Burgundy."
"Send him who will," said the Duke, fiercely, "he shall return on their hands in poor case. – Here! – drag him to the market-place! – slash him with bridle-reins and dog-whips until the tabard hang about him in tatters! – Upon the Rouge Sanglier! – ça, ça! – Haloo, haloo!"
Four or five large hounds, such as are painted in the hunting-pieces upon which Rubens and Schneiders laboured in conjunction, caught the well-known notes with which the Duke concluded, and began to yell and bay as if the boar were just roused from his lair.
"By the rood!" said King Louis, observant to catch the vein of his dangerous cousin, "since the ass has put on the boar's hide, I would set the dogs on him to bait him out of it!"
"Right! right!" exclaimed Duke Charles, the fancy exactly chiming in with his humour at the moment – "it shall be done! – uncouple the hounds! – Hyke a Talbot! hyke a Beaumont! – We will course him from the door of the Castle to the east gate."
"I trust your Grace will treat me as a beast of chase," said the fellow, putting the best face he could upon the matter, "and allow me fair law?"
"Thou art but vermin," said the Duke, "and entitled to no law, by the letter of the book of hunting; nevertheless thou shalt have sixty yards in advance, were it but for the sake of thy unparalleled impudence. – Away, away, sirs! – we will see this sport." – And the council breaking up tumultuously, all hurried, none faster than the two Princes, to enjoy the humane pastime which King Louis had suggested.
The Rouge Sanglier showed excellent sport; for, winged with terror, and having half a score of fierce boar-hounds hard at his haunches, encouraged by the blowing of horns and the woodland cheer of the hunters, he flew like the very wind, and had he not been encumbered with his herald's coat, (the worst possible habit for a runner,) he might fairly have escaped dog-free; he also doubled once or twice, in a manner much approved of by the spectators. None of these, nay, not even Charles himself, was so delighted with the sport as King Louis, who, partly from political considerations, and partly as being naturally pleased with the sight of human suffering when ludicrously exhibited, laughed till the tears ran from his eyes, and in his ecstasies of rapture, caught hold of the Duke's ermine cloak, as if to support himself; whilst the Duke, no less delighted, flung his arm around the King's shoulder, making thus an exhibition of confidential sympathy and familiarity, very much at variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together.
Note 57
Disguised Herald. The heralds of the middle ages, like the feciales of the Romans, were invested with a character which was held almost sacred. To strike a herald was a crime which inferred a capital punishment; and to counterfeit the character of such an august official was a degree of treason towards those men who were accounted the depositaries of the secrets of monarchs and the honour of nobles. Yet a prince so unscrupulous as Louis XI. did not hesitate to practise such an imposition, when he wished to enter into communication with Edward IV. of England.
Exercising that knowledge of mankind for which he was so eminent, he selected, as an agent fit for his purpose, a simple valet. This man, whose address had been known to him, he disguised as a herald, with all the insignia of his office, and sent him in that capacity to open a communication with the English army. Two things are remarkable in this transaction. First, that the stratagem, though of so fraudulent a nature, does not seem to have been necessarily called for, since all that King Louis could gain by it would be, that he did not commit himself by sending a more responsible messenger. The other circumstance worthy of notice, is, that Comines, though he mentions the affair at great length, is so pleased with the King's shrewdness in selecting, and dexterity at indoctrinating, his pseudo-herald, that he forgets all remark on the impudence and fraud of the imposition, as well as the great risk of discovery. From both which circumstances, we are led to the conclusion, that the solemn character which the heralds endeavoured to arrogate to themselves, had already begun to lose regard among statesmen and men of the great world.
Even Ferne, zealous enough for the dignity of the herald, seems to impute this intrusion on their rights in some degree to necessity. "I have heard some," he says, "but with shame enough, allow of the action of Louis XI. of the kingdom of France, who had so unknightly a regard both of his own honour, and also of armes, that he seldom had about his court any officer-at-armes. And therefore, at such time as Edward IV., King of England, had entered France with a hostile power, and lay before the town of Saint Quentin, the same French King, for want of a herald to carry his mind to the English King, was constrained to suborn a vadelict, or common serving-man, with a trumpet-banner, having a hole made through the middest for this preposterous herauld to put his head through, and to cast it over his shoulders instead of a better coat-armour of France. And thus came this hastily-arrayed courier as a counterfeit officer-at-armes, with instructions from his sovereign's mouth to offer peace to our King. 'Well,' replies Torquatus, the other interlocutor in the dialogue, 'that fault was never yet to be seen in any of our English Kings, nor ever shall be, I hope.'"—Ferne's Blazen of Gentry, 1586, p. 161.
In this curious book, the author, besides some assertions in favour of coat-armour, too nearly approaching blasphemy to be quoted, informs us, that the Apostles were gentlemen of blood, and many of them descended from that worthy conqueror, Judas Maccabæus; but through the course of time and persecution of wars, poverty oppressed the kindred, and they were constrained to servile works. So were the four doctors and fathers of the church (Ambrose, Augustine, Hierome, and Gregorie) gentlemen both of blood and arms, p. 98. The author's copy of this rare tract (memorial of a hopeful young friend, now no more) exhibits a curious sally of the national and professional irritability of a Scottish herald.
This person appears to have been named Thomas Drysdale, Islay Herald, who purchased the volume in 1619, and seems to have perused it with patience and profit till the came to the following passage in Ferne, which enters into the distinction between sovereign and feudatory crowns. "There is also a King, and he a homager, or foedatorie to the estate and majestie of another King, as to his superior lord, as that of Scotland to our English empire." This assertion set on fire the Scottish blood of Islay Herald, who, forgetting the book had been printed nearly forty years before, and that the author was probably dead, writes on the margin in great wrath, and in a half text hand, "He is a traitor and lyar in his throat, and I offer him the combat, that says Scotland's Kings were ever feudatorie to England."