finest of the swords that my father had left, placed over my violet
velvet doublet the new cloak I had bought for the occasion, handed me my
new hat with its showy plumes, and stood aside for me to pass out. In
the pocket of my red breeches was a purse holding enough golden crowns
to ease my path for some time to come. I cast one last look around the
old hall and, trying to check the rapidity of my breath, and the rising
of the lump in my throat, strode out to the court-yard, breathed the
fresh air with a new ecstasy, mounted the steaming horse, gave Michel my
hand for a moment, and, purposely avoiding meeting his eyes, spoke a
last kind word to the old man. After acknowledging the farewells of the
other servants, who stood in line trying to look joyous, I started my
horse with a little jerk of the rein, and was borne swiftly through the
porte, over the bridge, and out into the world. Behind me was the home
of my fathers and my childhood; before me was Paris. It was a fine,
bracing winter morning, and I was twenty-one. A good horse was under me,
a sword was at my side, there was money in my pocket. Will I ever feel
again as I did that morning?

Some have stupidly wondered why, being a Huguenot born and bred, I did
not, when free to leave La Tournoire, go at once to offer my sword to
Henri of Navarre or to some other leader of our party. This is easily
answered. If I was a Huguenot, I was also a man of twenty-one; and the
latter much more than the former. Paris was the centre of the world.
There was the court, there were the adventures to be had, there must one
go to see the whole of life; there would I meet men and make conquests of
women. There awaited me the pleasures of which I had known only by
report, there the advancement, the triumphs in personal quarrels; and,
above all else, the great love affair of my dreams. Who that is a man and
twenty-one has not such dreams? And who that is a man and seventy would
have been without them? Youth and folly go together, each sweetening the