Tut! I have the best armour of the world.

Would it were day!

You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.

It is the best horse of Europe.

Will it never be morning?

My Lord of Orleans, and my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and

armour?

You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that

treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha! He bounds from the earth, as if his

entrails were hairs; _le cheval volant_, the Pegasus, _qui a les

narines de feu!_ When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the

air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is

more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.

And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus. He is pure

air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in

him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is

indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.

Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.

It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a

monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

No more, cousin.

Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to

the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a

theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and

my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a sovereign to

reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on; and for the

world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular

functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and

began thus: “Wonder of nature,”—

I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress.

Then did they imitate that which I compos’d to my courser, for my horse

is my mistress.

Your mistress bears well.

Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and

particular mistress.

Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.

So perhaps did yours.

Mine was not bridled.

O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of

Ireland, your French hose off, and in your strait strossers.

You have good judgment in horsemanship.

Be warn’d by me, then; they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into

foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.

I had as lief have my mistress a jade.

I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.

I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.

“_Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au

bourbier_.” Thou mak’st use of anything.

Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so

little kin to the purpose.

My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are

those stars or suns upon it?

Stars, my lord.

Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.

And yet my sky shall not want.

That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour

some were away.

Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were

some of your brags dismounted.

Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I

will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English

faces.

I will not say so, for fear I should be fac’d out of my way. But I

would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the

English.

Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?

You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.

’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself.

The Dauphin longs for morning.

He longs to eat the English.

I think he will eat all he kills.

By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.

Swear by her foot that she may tread out the oath.

He is simply the most active gentleman of France.

Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.

He never did harm, that I heard of.

Nor will do none tomorrow. He will keep that good name still.

I know him to be valiant.

I was told that by one that knows him better than you.

What’s he?

Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car’d not who knew it.

He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.

By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey. ’Tis

a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.

“Ill will never said well.”

I will cap that proverb with “There is flattery in friendship.”

And I will take up that with “Give the devil his due.”

Well plac’d. There stands your friend for the devil; have at the very

eye of that proverb with “A pox of the devil.”

You are the better at proverbs, by how much “A fool’s bolt is soon

shot.”

You have shot over.

’Tis not the first time you were overshot.

My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of

your tents.

Who hath measur’d the ground?

The Lord Grandpré.

A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas, poor

Harry of England, he longs not for the dawning as we do.

What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope

with his fat-brain’d followers so far out of his knowledge!

If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.

That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they

could never wear such heavy head-pieces.

That island of England breeds very valiant creatures. Their mastiffs

are of unmatchable courage.

Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and

have their heads crush’d like rotten apples! You may as well say,

that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious

and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives; and then,

give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like

wolves and fight like devils.

Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.

Then shall we find tomorrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to

fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we about it?

It is now two o’clock; but, let me see, by ten

We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.