gentlemen of the King's ungainly brother, Anjou, had a manly detestation
for these bedaubed effeminates, and sought opportunities to extirpate
them with the sword. Yet these dainty youths, one of whom was De Quelus,
who now came forward to meet me, were not cowards.

The young Marquis wore a slashed doublet of brown velvet and gold. His
silken hose were of a lighter tint of brown. His ruff was so enormous
that he had to keep the point of his beard thrust forward at an
elevation.

"I shall present you when the King passes," he said to me. "I have
already spoken a word to Captain Duret, to whom you will report
to-morrow. He will make a veteran of you in a quarter of an hour. The
King, by the way, knows of your family. He knows every family in France,
for that matter. I spoke of you to him at his rising this morning. He
said that your father was a Huguenot, and I told him that you also were
Protestant. You know enough of things in France to be aware that your
Protestantism stands a little in your way at court, just now; but things
may change before there is a vacant captaincy in the Guards."

People who have thought it bad enough that I should have gone to Paris,
instead of to the court of Henri of Navarre, have been astonished,
beyond expression, at my having desired to serve in the King's infantry,
which, in the event of another civil war, might be arrayed against the
army of our faith. But it must be borne in mind that I had this desire
at a time when none knew how the different armies might be placed
towards one another in the civil war, which everybody admitted must, at
some time or other, occur. I was one of the many who believed that the
Duke of Guise, using the newly formed Holy League as his instrument,
would aim for the throne of France; that King Henri III. would be