The denouement suited the grim mood of the overlord.  It pleased him to see the smug villagers stand by while the Fool mounted his steed.  Side by side from the parapet he and the Bishop looked down into the town.

“The birthday of our Lord, Bishop,” he said, “with fools on blooded horses and the courage of the townspeople in their stomachs.”

“The birthday of our Lord,” said the Bishop tranquilly, “with a lad mounted who has heretofore trudged afoot, and with the hungry fed in the market place.”

Now it had been in the mind of the Bishop that the day would soften Charles’ grim humour and that he might speak to him as man to man.  But Charles was not softened.

So the Bishop gathered up his courage.  His hand was still on the cross on the donkey’s back.

“You are young, my son, and have been grievously disappointed.  I, who am old, have seen many things, and this I have learned.  Two things there are that, next to the love of God, must be greatest in a man’s life—­not war nor slothful peace, nor pride, nor yet a will that would bend all things to its end.”

The overlord scowled.  He had found the girl Joan in the Market Square, and his eyes were on her.

“One,” said the Bishop, “is the love of a woman.  The other is—­a child.”

The donkey stood meekly, with hanging head.

“A woman,” repeated the Bishop.  “You grow rough up here on your hillside.  Only a few months since the lady your wife went away, and already order has forsaken you.  The child, your daughter, runs like a wild thing, without control.  Our Holy Church deplores these things.”

“Will Holy Church grant me another wife?”

“Holy Church,” replied the Bishop gravely, “would have you take back, my lord, the wife whom your hardness drove away.”

The seigneur’s gaze turned to the east, where lay the Castle of Philip, his cousin.  Then he dropped brooding eyes to the Square below, where the girl Joan assisted her father by the fire, and moved like a mother of kings.

“You wish a woman for the castle, father,” he said.  “Then a woman we shall have.  Holy Church may not give me another wife, but I shall take one.  And I shall have a son.”

* * * * *

The child Clotilde had watched it all from a window.  Because she was very high the thing she saw most plainly was the cross on the donkey’s back.  Far out over the plain was a moving figure which might or might not have been the Jew.  She chose to think it was.

“One of Your people,” she said toward the crucifix.  “I have done the good deed.”

She was a little frightened, for all her high head.

Other Christmases she and the lady her mother had sat hand in hand, and listened to the roystering.

“They are drunk,” Clotilde would say.

But her mother would stroke her hand and reply: