Louis found a banquet prepared with such a profusion of splendour
and magnificence, as became the wealth of his formidable vassal, possessed as he
was of almost all the Low Countries, then the richest portion of Europe. At the
head of the long board, which groaned under plate of gold and silver, filled to
profusion with the most exquisite dainties, sat the Duke, and on his right hand,
upon a seat more elevated than his own, was placed his royal guest. Behind him
stood on one side the son of the Duke of Gueldres, who officiated as his grand
carver - on the other, Le Glorieux, his jester, without whom he seldom stirred;
for, like most men of his hasty and coarse character, Charles carried to
extremity the general taste of that age for court-fools and jesters -
experiencing that pleasure in their display of eccentricity and mental infirmity
which his more acute, but not more benevolent, rival, loved better to extract
from marking the imperfections of humanity in its nobler specimens, and finding
subject for mirth in the »fears of the brave, and follies of the wise.« And,
indeed, if the anecdote related by Brantome be true, that a court-fool, having
overheard Louis, in one of his agonies of repentant devotion, confess his
accession to the poisoning of his brother Henry, Count of Guyenne, divulged it
next day at dinner before the assembled court, that monarch might be supposed
rather more than satisfied with the pleasantries of professed jesters for the
rest of his life.
    But, on the present occasion, Louis neglected not to take notice of the
favourite buffoon of the Duke, and to applaud his repartees; which he did the
rather that he thought he saw that the folly of Le Glorieux, however grossly it
was sometimes displayed, covered more than the usual quantity of shrewd and
caustic observation proper to his class.
    In fact, Tiel Wetzweiler, called Le Glorieux, was by no means a jester of
the common stamp. He was a tall, fine-looking man, excellent at many exercises,
which seemed scarce reconcilable with mental imbecility, because it must have
required patience and attention to attain them. He usually followed the Duke to
the chase and to the fight; and at Montl'hery, when Charles was in considerable
personal danger, wounded in the throat, and likely to be made prisoner by a
French knight who had hold of his horse's rein, Tiel Wetzweiler charged the
assailant so forcibly, as to overthrow him and disengage his master. Perhaps he
was afraid of this being thought too serious a service