The Story of Viteau

by Frank R. Stockton

"And while I make this pen," continued his companion, "I shall tell you the story of my letter."

"Yes, indeed," cried Louis; "I should rather have that than the pen—at least, just now."

"That is a bad choice, for the pen is to give you liberty, and the story will not do that. However, there is a lesson in the story, and you shall have it. It was just before one of the battles between Queen Blanche and the Duke of Burgundy. I was a soldier then, in the service of a good knight; and although I was not his squire, but a simple man-at-arms, ready to fight on horse or on foot, or not to fight at all, just as the case might be, still I was a better man than the squire—for he could not write, any more than his master could. So, just before the battle, the knight sent for me, and, said he, 'Jasto, I have heard that you are a wise fellow and can write, and I want you to write me a letter.' He knew I could write, because I had told him so, and had told all my companions so, for this I found I must do, otherwise they would never be aware of it; for, not knowing how to write themselves, how could they comprehend that I knew? 'I want to send a messenger back to my castle,' said my good knight, 'and I want him to carry a straight and fair message, which he can not do if I send it by word of mouth. So you must write what I wish to say in a letter to my seneschal, and the messenger shall carry it.' With that, he showed me a little piece of parchment that he had with him, and a phial of ink and a pen, and he bade me sit down and write what he told me to say. I liked not this haste, which gave me no time for study and preparation, and I told him, with due respect, that I could not write unless I had a table on which to lay my parchment. Whereupon he made a man with a cuirass get down on all-fours before me, so that on this man's steel back I could write as on a table. My master then told me to write how that, knowing the enemy would soon reach the spot where we then lay, and feeling the want of a stronger force, he desired his seneschal to send him five more men, and five horses, with arms and all things needful, and also to send therewith a new casque which he expected from the armorer, and a long sword which hung up in the great hall, and divers other things, of which I wot not now. When I came to write down all this, I found myself sorely troubled, for you must know that to write a letter requires a knowledge of many things. One must know what letters are needed for a word, what order to put them in, and how to make them.

"Some words need a good many letters, and if the letters in a word are not the right letters, and are not set in a befitting order, it will be of no use for any man, even the most learned scholar, to try to tell what that word is. So I soon found that for many of the words I could not remember the letters, and of those letters I did remember there were some that I could not make, for I had forgotten their shape. But I would not tell my master that, for it would have been a sorrowful thing to have fallen from my high place as the most learned person in our company, not to speak of the punishment I might have expected. So I wrote on, making the best words I could devise with the letters at my command, and urging my master to repeat every sentence, so that I should be sure to get it straight and fair; and in that way I learned the whole letter by heart, and read it to him, when I had finished it, so that he was greatly gratified. 'Let me see the letter, my good Jasto,' said he; and when he looked at it, he said, 'The words seem very much like each other'—which was the truth, indeed, for most of them had the same letters in them, measured out in very much the same measurement. 'But it all looks simple enough,' he went on to say, 'and I greatly desire that I could read it, but that is beyond my powers.' And then he made his mark, which his seneschal well knew, and the letter was done.

"Thereupon he called for a messenger to take it in all haste to his castle, but I told him that he could have no better messenger than I should be, because, having writ the letter, I could read it to the person to whom it was sent, if it should so be that he could not read it himself. 'But old Hubert can read, else I would not send him a letter,' said my lord. But I answered that, if he had never seen my writing, it might be so strange to him that it would take much time for him to understand the proper slope and indication of the letters, and so the re-enforcements might be sorely hindered in their coming. Therefore it was that I was sent, and I so saved my life; for, shortly after, the battle came off, and, if I had been there, I know I should have been killed, as most of my knight's men were. But I was safe in the castle, and when I went back with the men and the horses and the armor, I met my lord coming to his castle, and right glad was he to see me with my company, for he was in such sore plight that he was even afraid of thieves, although there were but few of them to be met with then, being mostly in the wars. And therefore, I, being fresh and unwounded, took the lead among the men-at-arms, and felt high in my lord's favor, and this was far better than being able to scratch off a poor letter that could be read."

"But what said the seneschal to your letter?" asked Louis.

"Oh, nought at all," answered Jasto. "I read it to him out of my head, and showed him his master's mark."

"But did you not feel, all the time, that you were a great trickster and cheat?" said the free-spoken Louis.

"No more than I do now," answered Jasto, "coming here to help you with your letter to your mother, and telling you a story with a moral to it, showing how arduous a thing it is to write a letter, so that you may be ready for your difficulties when they come upon you. And now this pen is done, and it ought to be, for I have put a score of nibs to it, and there is not enough quill left for another one. It may be blunt, but it will make a mark."

"And what am I to write on?" asked Louis.