I meet a Spaniard, a Lorraine, a Béarnais, or a Fleming curious enough
to wish to know what brings me here, and I should be very foolish not to
remember that there is a chance of that. M. Borromée, above all, I
suspect may play me some trick. Besides, what did I seek in asking the
king for this mission? Tranquillity. And now I am going to embroil the
king of Navarre with his wife. However, that is not my affair, except
that I shall make mortal enemies, who will prevent me from ever reaching
the happy age of eighty.

"Ma foi! but that is not much, for it is only worth living when you are
young. But then I might as well have waited for the knife of M. de
Mayenne. However, I will take precautions, and will translate this fine
letter into Latin, and engrave it on my memory; then I will buy a horse,
because from Juvisy to Pau I should have too often to put the right foot
before the left if I walked--but first I will destroy this letter."

This he proceeded to do; tearing it into an infinite number of little
pieces, sending some into the river, others into the air, and burying
the rest in holes in the ground.

"Now let me think of my Latin theme," said he; and this study occupied
him until he arrived at Corbeil, where he bestowed a glance at the
cathedral, but fixed an earnest look at a traiteur's, whence came an
appetizing smell of dinner. We will not describe either the dinner he
made or the horse he bought; suffice it to say that the dinner was long
and the horse was bad.