"There is no help for it," answered the wounded man, giving him his hand. "Rescue or no rescue, I do surrender."
"Your name is the next thing," replied the English officer.
"Jean Charost, Baron de Brecy," replied the young man. "I pray you tell me how goes the battle?"
"It is over, sir," answered the Englishman. "God has been pleased to bless our arms. Your men will surrender, of course."
With them, too, there was no help for it, as there were some twenty or thirty spears around the them; and when they had given their pledge, the officer, an elderly man, turned again to Jean Charost, saying, in a kindly tone, "You are badly hurt, sir, and I am sure have done your devoir; right knightly for your king and country. I can not stay to tend you; but these good fathers will have gentle care of you, I am sure. When you are well, inquire for the Lord Willoughby. You will not find him hard to deal with. The parole of a gentleman with such wounds as these is worth prison bars of three inch thickness;" and thus saying, he remounted his horse and rode away.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A few brief glimpses, if you please, dear reader--quiet, and calm, and cool, like the early sunshine of a clear autumn day--a few brief glimpses, to throw some light upon a lapse of several years.
It may be asked why are not the events of those years recorded? Why are we not carried through the details of a history in which the writer, at least, must have some interest? In every life, as in every country which one passes through, there come spots of dull monotony, where the waters stagnate on the heavy flats, and to linger among them is dangerous to active existence. I say, in every life there are these flats at some period or another; for I can recall none in memory or in history, where they have not been found--none where all has been mountain and valley.
Take the most active life that ever was, that of Napoleon Bonaparte; carry him from the military school to the command of armies; go with him along his comet-like career, from glory to glory up to the zenith of his power, and then on his course down to the horizon with fierce rapidity. You come to the rock in the Atlantic, and the dull lapse of impotence and captivity at last!
In a cell, in the small priory of St. George of Hesdin, and on the pallet bed of one of the monks, lay a young gentleman pale and wan, but still with the light of reviving life in his eyes. By his side was seated a tall, thin old man, or if not very old in years, old in the experience of sorrows.