"But have you no thought for the lady?" he cried.

I laughed at him. "Were I still eighteen, boy, the thought might
trouble me. Had I my illusions, I might imagine that my wife must
be some woman of whom I should be enamoured. As it is, I have grown
to the age of twenty-eight unwed. Marriage becomes desirable. I
must think of an heir to all the wealth of Bardelys. And so I go
to Languedoc. If the lady be but half the saint that fool
Chatellerault has painted her, so much the better for my children;
if not, so much the worse. There is the dawn, Mironsac, and it is
time we were abed. Let us drive these plaguy gamesters home."

When the last of them had staggered down my steps, and I had bidden
a drowsy lacquey extinguish the candles, I called Ganymede to light
me to bed and aid me to undress. His true name was Rodenard; but
my friend La Fosse, of mythological fancy, had named him Ganymede,
after the cup-bearer of the gods, and the name had clung to him.
He was a man of some forty years of age, born into my father's
service, and since become my intendant, factotum, majordomo, and
generalissimo of my regiment of servants and my establishments both
in Paris and at Bardelys.

We had been to the wars together ere I had cut my wisdom teeth, and
thus had he come to love me. There was nothing this invaluable
servant could not do. At baiting or shoeing a horse, at healing a
wound, at roasting a capon, or at mending a doublet, he was alike
a master, besides possessing a score of other accomplishments that
do not now occur to me, which in his campaigning he had acquired.
Of late the easy life in Paris had made him incline to corpulency,
and his face was of a pale, unhealthy fullness.