"Is not the wine to your liking?" he asked, his hand tightening on her chair. "Perhaps it is too sour for your taste?"
"Nay; I thought it rather sweet," she answered. "Oh, I meant not that--"
"It _is_ sweet wine, Princess," he said, setting down an empty glass. "Sweeter than our Austrian vintage. Not white and thin and watery, but red--red as blood--red as your heart's blood--or mine--"
Crash! from the hand of the duke's jester had fallen a goblet to the floor. The princess started, turned; for a moment their glances bridged the distance from where she sat, to the fools' end of the table; then hers slowly fell; slowly, and she passed a hand, whereon shone the king's ring, across her brow; looked up, as though once more to span infinity with her gaze, when her eyes fell short and met the duke's. Deliberately he lifted his filled glass.
"Red as your heart's blood--and mine--my love!" he repeated; and then stared sharply across the table at his jester.
Triboulet, swaggering in his chair, so high his feet could not touch the floor, surveyed the broken glass, the duke and the duke's fool. For some time his vigilant eyes had been covertly studying the unconscious foreign jester, noting sundry signs and symptoms. Nor had the princess' look when the goblet had fallen, been lost upon the misshapen buffoon; alert, wide-awake, his mind, quick to suspect, reached a sudden conclusion; a conclusion which by rapid process of reasoning became a conviction. Privileged to speak where others must need be silent, his profession that of prying subtlety, which spared neither rank nor power so that it raised a laugh, he felt no hesitation in publishing the information he had gleaned by his superior mental nimbleness.
"Ho! ho!" he bellowed, the better to attract attention to himself. "The duke sent his fool to amuse his betrothed and the fool hath lost his heart to his mistress."
The king left off his whispering, Catharine turned from the chancellor, Diane ceased furtively to regard Caillette, while the Queen of Navarre laughed nervously and murmured:
"Princess and jester! It will make another tale."
But Henry of Navarre looked gravely down. He, and Francis' queen--a passive spectator at the feast--and a bishop, whose interest lay in a truffled capon, alone followed not the direction of the duke's eyes. The fair favorite of the king clapped her hands, but the monarch frowned, not having forgotten that night in Fools' hall when the jester had appointed rogues to offices.