achievements. It was just here that, looking at the business with my
father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I had behaved like an
insolent young fool. But I was still too angry to acknowledge it.

Remained, then, but one course--to stay in Paris, and keep from
starvation as best I might.

My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to throw away
in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely what I should need
to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for accidents; so that,
after paying Maître Jacques, I had hardly two pieces to jingle together.

For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I could
write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian, thanks to
Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and handle a sword
none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that it should not be hard
to pick up a livelihood. But how to start about it I had no notion, and
finally I made up my mind to go and consult him whom I now called my one
friend in Paris, Jacques the innkeeper.

'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly Rue St.
Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might have been laid
out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so did they twist and
turn and double on themselves. I could make my way only at a snail's
pace, asking new guidance at every corner. Noon was long past when at
length I came on laggard feet around the corner by the Amour de Dieu.

Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though I had
resolved to seek out Maître Jacques, still 'twas a hateful thing to
enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I had paid for my