the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan had closed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled; "now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, and I shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night."
"Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowed joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the Duchess-Regent held her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence. She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a little sad.
And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first. Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly the jongleur sang.
"Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten, O Jehane?"
The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she were some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchess of Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countess of Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead."
The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose only title is the Constant Lover!"
"Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I have tasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine, and ever I thirst--I thirst--"
"Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first I kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane."
"Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since."
"Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last I kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane."
"But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered, and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice.
"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'"
"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after to-night we are as different persons, you and I."
He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so you tell me, time has slain!"
Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you, then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your audience is done."
Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and I will go, Jehane."
Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this das--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.
Sang the jongleur:
"There is a land those hereabout Ignore ... Its gates are barred By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. These mercifully guard That land we seek--the land so fair!-- And all the fields thereof, Where daffodils flaunt everywhere And ouzels chant of love,-- Lest we attain the Middle-Land, Whence clouded well-springs rise, And vipers from a slimy strand Lift glittering cold eyes.
"Now, the parable all may understand, And surely you know the name of the land! Ah, never a guide or ever a chart May safely lead you about this land,-- The Land of the Human Heart!"
And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane, married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby (called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story. First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear:
"I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane, the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, Sire Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the spirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the gross hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"in precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth."
Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said; "so you return alone!"
"I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you of liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede."
"You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother's eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But you are welcome home, my lad."
So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public, not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme, was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such admiration as was possible to a very young man only.
In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died without any disease and of no malady save
