Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/223

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THE CHEVALIER BAYARD 145 In the few months that intervened before his death he made the power of Portugal once more respected in the East. When he died in Cochin, in 1525, he was mourned by the natives as a just ruler, and by his countrymen as one who had saved to Portugal the richest part of the national domain. It is not strange, therefore, that when his ashes were conveyed to Lisbon, they were received with a pomp almost equal to that which greeted him when he came as the discoverer of the Orient and its priceless treasures. It is rare in history that one receives two triumphs, the one while living and the other when dead, especially in con- nection with the same achievement ; but it is rarer still that one who has won immortality should leave a record so singularly free from bickering and strife as that of the dignified and self-contained Portuguese rival of Columbus, Dom Vasco da Gama, the " Discoverer and Sixth Viceroy of India, Count of Vidi- gueira," where he lies entombed. Little is known of his private life ; but there seems no doubt that it was free from the stains that obscure his great rival's fame, from whom he also differed in the fact that he neither begged nor boasted, and in old age was honored even more than in his prime THE CHEVALIER BAYARD BY HERBERT GREENHOUGH SMITH (1476-1524) PIERRE Du TERRAIL was born in 1476, at Castle Bayard, in Dauphiny. The house of Terrail belonged to the Scarlet of the an- cient peers of France. The Lords of Bayard, during many genera- tions, had died under the flags of battle. Poictiers, Agincourt, and Montlhe'ry had taken, in succes- sion, the last three; and in 1479, when Pierre was in his nurse's arms, his father, Aymon du Terrail, was carried from the field of Guinegate with a frightful wound, from the effects of which, although he survived for seventeen years to limp about his castle with the help of sticks, he never again put on his shirt of mail. The old knight was thus debarred from bringing up his son as his own squire. 10