Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1913 — WIT and HUMOR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WIT and HUMOR

GRAND PROVOST MADE ERROR

Tristan L’Hermlte Receives Private Sign From Louis XI., but Picks Out Wrong Man. Louis XI. of France one day, observing among the crowd who assembled to see him an officer whom he disliked, made a private sign to Tristan L’Hermlte, his grand provost, to put him out of the way. Tristan, well accustomed to the signal, but unluckily mistaking the man alluded to, accosted a well-fed monk, who stood in the same time with the captain, allured him into the palace yard, thrust him into a sack and threw him into the Seine. ____ -' ■ - : Next day Louis, hearing that the proscribed officer had been seen posting toward Flanders, reproached Tristan with this neglect. “To Flanders!” said the grand provost; “your majesty must be in an error. The monk has got halfway to Rouen by this time. I sent him adrift tied up in a sack/’ “What monk?” “Him your majesty pointed at.” “Hah!” said the king, with his usral oath, “you have drowned me the best priest in the kingdom. It cannot be helped now, so we will have a half a dozen masses said for his soul; but it was that dog of a captain, not the poor monk, that I meant” —Life.