Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/303

Rh indigné sur moy, par quoy, après avoir eu celle deffense, je ne m’y retourneray point si tost, ains m’en yray à la garde de Dieu, je ne scay où.” Then is heard the voice of the duke, who has remained in his seat, paralysed with fury… and the duchess in an agony of fear says to the clerk: “My friend, open the door quickly, quickly, we must be gone, or we are lost.”

On returning to his apartments, the old duke, beside himself with anger, fell into a fit of mental aberration; about nightfall he left Brussels alone, on horseback, insufficiently dressed and without warning anyone. “Les jours pour celle heurre d’alors estoient courts, et estoit jà basse vesprée quant ce prince droit-cy monta à cheval, et ne demandoit riens autre fors estre emmy les champs seul et à par luy. Sy porta ainsy l’aventure que ce propre jour-là, après un long et âpre gel, il faisoit un releng, et par une longue épaisse bruyne, qui avoit couru tout ce jour là, vesprée tourna en pluie bien menue, mais trés-mouillant et laquelle destrempoit les terres et rompoit glasces avecques vent qui s’y entrebouta.”

Both this passage, and the preceding one, are assuredly not lacking in simple and natural force. In the description which follows of the nocturnal ride of the duke, as he wanders through the fields and woods, Chastellain has mixed his pompous rhetoric with this spontaneous naturalism, which produces a very bizarre effect. Starving and tired, the old duke, having lost his way, vainly calls for help. He narrowly escapes falling into a river which he takes for a road. He is wounded by falling with his horse. He listens in vain for the crowing of a cock, or the barking of a dog, which might have indicated some habitation to him. At last he perceives a glimmer and tries to get to it; loses sight of it, finds it again and reaches it at last. “Mais plus l’approchoit, plus sambloit hideuse chose