There was, however, a balance to all this veneration.
Denys, like his predecessor Achilles, had his weak part, his very weak
part, thought Gerard.
His foible was "woman."
Whatever he was saying or doing, he stopped short at sight of a
farthingale, and his whole soul became occupied with that garment and
its inmate till they had disappeared; and sometimes for a good while
after.
He often put Gerard to the blush by talking his amazing German to such
females as he caught standing or sitting indoors or out, at which they
stared; and when he met a peasant girl on the road, he took off his cap
to her and saluted her as if she was a queen; the invariable effect of
which was, that she suddenly drew herself up quite stiff like a soldier
on parade, and wore a forbidding countenance.
"They drive me to despair," said Denys. "Is that a just return to a
civil bonnetade? They are large, they are fair, but stupid as swans."
"What breeding can you expect from women that wear no hose?" inquired
Gerard; "and some of them no shoon? They seem to me reserved and modest,
as becomes their sex, and sober, whereas the men are little better than
beer-barrels. Would you have them brazen as well as hoseless?"
"A little affability adorns even beauty," sighed Denys.
"Then let these alone, sith they are not to your taste," retorted
Gerard. "What, is there no sweet face in Burgundy that would pale to see
you so wrapped up in strange women?"
"Half-a-dozen that would cry their eyes out.
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