Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/107

 phrase. But I certainly think the genii in attendance on these gentlemen are by no means to be envied, since the work is hard, the laud little, and the wages less; and if "like master like man" hold good these poor devils must have but a scurvy life of it. Nevertheless some people profess great love for these queer customers, and the High Constable was one of them, and he would have stowed inside the castle a small army of poets, romancers, stargazers, scholars, cunning mechanics, and dabblers in Hermetical affairs, and all at the same time; and they say that he got his money's worth out of them for they often made him laugh till he cried. Others think he might have been more thrifty in his amusements and declare that he would have done well to content himself with his household fool who made folly his profession whereas the rest were mere virtuosi or amateurs of foolishness. Yet by this assemblage of oddities my lord enjoyed a great variety and diversity of doublets, faces, and methods of madness; and he delighted in nothing so much as to watch his jokers at dinner, or in their other employments the which were manifold. It is reported that in an apartment of the south-western tower, somewhat near the sky but provided with a fair hanging gallery, Master Jehan Doucereutz perfected his rare piece called Le Roman de la Mouche, admired by all virtuous people for its fine colloquies, dialogues, allegories, fables, and moralities, though some critics call it a tedious and lengthy poem. But in these dissolute times a piece of more than twelve thousand lines tires out our