men who have served the cause should be reduced to such.
straits. Were it, possible for me, to increase my own train at
present, I should consider it an honour to have you with me. But
I am hard put to it myself, and so are we all, and the King of
Navarre not least among us. He has lived for a month upon a wood
which M. de Rosny has cut down. I will mention your name to him,
but I should be cruel rather than kind were I not to warn you
that nothing can come of it.'

With that he offered me his hand, and, cheered as much by this
mark of consideration as by the kindness of his expressions, I
rallied my spirits. True, I wanted comfort more substantial, but
it was not to be had. I thanked him therefore as becomingly as I
could, and seeing there was no help for it, took my leave of him,
and slowly and sorrowfully withdrew from the room.

Alas! to escape I had to face the outside world, for which his
kind words were an ill preparation. I had to run the gauntlet of
the antechamber. The moment I appeared, or rather the moment the
door closed behind me, I was hailed with a shout of derision.
While one cried, 'Way! way for the gentleman who has seen the
king!' another hailed me uproariously as Governor of Guyenne,
and a third requested a commission in my regiment.

I heard these taunts with a heart full almost to bursting. It
seemed to me an unworthy thing that, merely by reason of my
poverty, I should be derided by youths who had still all their
battles before them; but to stop or reproach them would only, as
I well knew, make matters worse, and, moreover, I was so sore
stricken that I had little spirit left even to speak.