Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/55

Rh meeting approaches, there follows a veritable race to be the first in doing homage to the other. At the news that the dauphin is coming to meet him, the old duke is extremely vexed; he sends him “three, four messages, one after the other, to tell him, that if he should ride forward to meet him, he had taken an oath, he would quickly return to where he came from, and would retire before him so quickly and so far, that the other would not find him for a whole year, nor would see him, whatever he did; for, he said, it would mean to him, the duke, ridicule and shame, which would never cease, but be imputed to him throughout the world, to all eternity as a great outrage and a foolish thing; which he was very anxious to avoid.” Out of reverence for the blood of France, the duke, although in the territory of the Empire, prohibits his sword to be carried before him, on entering Brussels; before reaching the palace, he hastily alights from his horse, enters the court and passes on quickly on perceiving the king’s son, “who has come down from his apartment, holding the duchess by the hand, and rapidly goes to him in the inner court with wide-open arms.” At once the old duke bares his head, kneels down for a moment and passes on quickly. The duchess holds the dauphin to prevent his advancing a step, the dauphin vainly seizes the duke to prevent him from kneeling, and makes a fruitless attempt to make him rise. Both cried with emotion, says Chastellain, and so did all the spectators.

In the royal receptions of modern times we undoubtedly find ceremonies bordering on the ludicrous, but we shall look in vain for this passionate anxiety about formalities, which attests that towards the close of the Middle Ages a moral significance still attached to them.

After the young count of Charolais, out of modesty, has obstinately refused to use the wash-basin before a meal at the same time with the queen of England, the court talks the whole day of the incident; the duke, to whom the case is submitted, charges two noblemen to argue the case on both sides. Humble refusals to take precedence of another last upwards of a quarter of an hour; the longer one resists, the more one is praised. People hide their hands to avoid the honour of a hand-kiss; the queen of Spain does so on meeting the young archduke Philippe le Beau; the latter waits patiently,