month of December which saw me thus miserably straitened saw me
reach the age of forty, which I regard, differing in that from
many, as the grand climacteric of a man's life, it will be
believed that I had need of all the courage which religion and a
campaigner's life could supply.

I had been compelled some time before to sell all my horses
except the black Sardinian with the white spot on its forehead;
and I now found myself obliged to part also with my valet de
chambre and groom, whom I dismissed on the same day, paying them
their wages with the last links of gold chain left to me. It was
not without grief and dismay that I saw myself thus stripped of
the appurtenances of a man of birth, and driven to groom my own
horse under cover of night. But this was not the worst. My
dress, which suffered inevitably from this menial employment,
began in no long time to bear witness to the change in my
circumstances; so that on the day of the King of Navarre's
entrance into St. Jean I dared not face the crowd, always quick
to remark the poverty of those above them, but was fain to keep
within doors and wear out my patience in the garret of the
cutler's house in the Rue de la Coutellerie, which was all the
lodging I could now afford.

Pardieu, 'tis a strange world! Strange that time seems to me;
more strange compared with this. My reflections on that day, I
remember, were of the most melancholy. Look at it how I would, I
could not but see that my life's spring was over. The crows'
feet were gathering about my eyes, and my moustachios, which
seemed with each day of ill-fortune to stand out more fiercely
in proportion as my face grew leaner, were already grey. I was