women and I am close upon forty years of age. The task, I can
assure you, was little to my taste. I embarked upon it because,
being a soldier and having received my orders, I was in the
unfortunate position of being unable to help myself. But I intend,
monsieur, to adhere rigidly to the letter of these commands. Already
I have endured more than enough in the interests of this damsel. I
have ridden from Paris, and that means close upon a week in the
saddle - no little thing to a man who has acquired certain habits of
life and developed a taste for certain minor comforts which he is
very reluctant to forgo. I have fed and slept at inns, living on
the worst of fares and sleeping on the hardest, and hardly the
cleanest, of beds. Ventregris! Figure to yourself that last night
we lay at Luzan, in the only inn the place contained - a hovel,
Monsieur le Seneschal, a hovel in which I would not kennel a dog
I loved."

His face flushed, and his voice rose as he dwelt upon the things
he had undergone.

"My servant and I slept in a dormitory'- a thousand devils! monsieur,
in a dormitory! Do you realize it? We had for company a drunken
vintner, a pedlar, a pilgrim on his way to Rome, and two peasant
women; and they sent us to bed without candles, for modesty's sake.
I ask you to conceive my feelings in such a case as that. I could
tell you more; but that as a sample of what I have undergone could
scarcely be surpassed."

"Truly-truly outrageous," sympathized the Seneschal; yet he grinned.

"I ask you -have I not suffered inconvenience enough already in the