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 shelter within
the Duke of Burgundy's lines, pretending to be deserters from the
waning cause of the king, each of whom had the same tale to tell to
the credulous ears of the enemy; namely, that the king's new
favourite was a wastrel and a fool, who had no better purpose in
life than the rhyming of madrigals, the tuning of lutes, the
draining of flagons, and the pressing of ladies' fingers in the
dance.
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