interpreted by an eloquent tongue fired by a ready mother wit, earned him the ear and won him the heart of the king's great captains and wrung from them at first a reluctant but finally such a delighted adherence as their sires had been compelled to surrender to the Maid of Orleans.
Yet while our poet was playing these two parts, he managed his affairs so dexterously that he seemed to the general eye to be playing but one part, and that the part of the dazzlingly magnificent courtier. If his mornings were given to consultation with the king and the king's chief soldiers, if his forenoons were devoted to the confirming of edicts and the promulgations of laws all tending to alleviate the condition and lighten the load of the people of Paris, his afternoons and evenings and shining summer nights were entirely surrendered to the glittering pleasures and pastimes of a man of ease. We hear of entertainment after entertainment, banquet and ball and masquerade, pageant and play and pastime, each one of which seemed to be the last word of wealthy ingenuity until it was eclipsed by its still more splendid successor. And it was this part of which the Count of Montcorbier chose to make the most with a very special purpose. He caused, it seems, many emissaries of his to quit Paris and find
