"Yes. Imagine, if you can, that among the Carmelites, who have not the reputation of being Erasmuses or Descartes, I was looked upon as a prodigy,—of learning, be it understood. The result was that when Monsieur le Duc de Longueville came to Rouen to urge that city to declare in favor of the parliament, I was sent to harangue Monsieur de Longueville; the which I did in such elegant and well-chosen language, that Monsieur de Longueville not only expressed himself as well pleased with my eloquence, but asked me if I would be his secretary. This happened just as I was about to take the vows."
"Yes, I remember; and on the pretext that you were saying farewell to the world, you asked me for a hundred pistoles, which were given into your own hands."
"And they are the only ones I received, on the word of a gentleman!"
"But you were to renounce the world."
"Yes, such was my intention; but such was not the intention of Providence, which probably had other plans for me. It made a different disposition of me through the medium of Monsieur de Longueville; it was not its will that I should remain a monk. I therefore conformed to the will of a merciful Providence, and I am free to say that I do not repent having done so."
"Then you are no longer in the Church?"
"No, not for the moment, at least, my dear sister. I do not dare say that I may not return to it some day; for what man can say to-day what he will do to-morrow? Has not Monsieur de Rancé recently founded the Trappist order? Perhaps I shall follow in his footsteps, and found some new order. But for the moment I have dallied with war, you see, and that has made me profane and impure for some time to come; at the first opportunity I shall purify myself."
"You a fighting man!" exclaimed Nanon, with a shrug.
"Why not? Dame! I won't pretend to say that I am a Dunois, a Duguesclin, a Bayard, a knight without fear and without reproach. No, I am not so vainglorious as to claim that I have not some trifling peccadilloes to be ashamed of, nor will I ask, like the famous condottiere Sforza, what fear is. I am a man, and, as Plautus says: 'Homo sum et nihil humani me alienum puto;' which means: 'I am a man, and nothing pertaining to mankind is strange to me.' I do know what fear is, therefore, but that does not prevent my being courageous on occasion. I handle a sword or a pistol prettily enough when I am driven to it. But my real bent, my decided vocation, is diplomacy. Unless I am sadly mistaken, my dear Nanon, I am on the way to become a great politician. A fine career is politics; Monsieur de Mazarin will rise very high if he's not hanged. And I am like Monsieur de Mazarin; so that one of my apprehensions, the greatest of them all, in fact, is, that I may be hanged. Fortunately, I have you, dear Nanon, and that gives me great confidence."
"So you are a warrior?"