"The ransom of the two knights' horses and armour, overthrown by your lance in the yesterday's tournament," replied the squire.
"Well, then, pay the two hireling grooms," said De Coucy, "whom we engaged to lead the two Arabians from Auvergne, since we discharged the Lombards who brought them thither."
"They will not be paid, beau sire," replied the squire. "They both pray you to employ the hire which is their due in furnishing them with each a horse and arms, and then to let them serve under your banner."
"Well, be it so, good Hugo," replied the knight. "Where--God knows where I shall find food to cram their mouths withal! 'Twill add too, however, to my poor following. Then, with thee and the page, and my own two varlets, we shall make seven:--eight with Gallon the fool. By my faith! I forgot the juggler, who is as stout a man-at-arms as any amongst us. But, as I said, get thee gone with the men to the Rue St. Victor, where the Haubergers dwell. Give them each a sword, a shield, a corslet, and a steel bonnet: but make them cast away those long knives hanging by their thighs which I love not;--they always make me think of that one wherewith the villain slave of Mahound ripped up my good battle-horse Hero; and would have slain me with it too, if I had not dashed him to atoms with my mace. Ride quick, and overtake me and the rest on the road: we go at a foot-pace." So saying, Guy de Coucy descended the narrow staircase of his dwelling; and, after having spoken for a few moments with one of the attendants of the Count d'Auvergne, who had remained behind, he mounted his horse, and rode slowly out of the city of Paris.
There is no possible mode of progression, that I know of, more engendering of melancholy than the foot-pace of a horse when one is alone. It is so like the slow and retarded pace which, whether we will or not, we are obliged to pursue on the high-road of life; and each object, as it rises on our view, seems such a long age in its approach, that one feels an almost irresistible desire, at every other step, to give the whip or spur, and accelerate the heart's slow beatings by some more rapid movement of the body. Did one wish to cultivate their stupidity, let them ride their horse, at a walk, over one of the long, straight roads of France.
The face of the country, however, was in those days very different from what it is at present; and the narrow, earthy road over which De Coucy travelled, wound in and out over hills and through forests: now plunging into the deep wood; now emerging by the bright stream; now passing, for a short space, through vineyards and fields, with a hamlet or a village by the road-side; now losing itself in wilds and solitudes, where one might well suppose that Adam's likeness had been never seen.
The continual changing of the objects around relieved, of course, the monotony of the slow pace at which De Coucy had condemned himself to proceed, while expecting of his squire's return; and a calm sort of melancholy was all he felt, as he revolved in his mind the various points of his own situation and that of his friend the Count d'Auvergne.
In regard to himself, new feelings had sprung up in his bosom--feelings that he had heard of, but never known before. He loved, and he fancied he was beloved; and dreams, and hopes, and expectations, softer, calmer, more profound than ever had reached him in camps or courts, flowed in upon his heart, like the stream of some deep, pure river, and washed away all that was rude and light, or unworthy in his bosom. Yet, at the same time, all the tormenting contentions of hope and fear--the fine hair balancings of doubt and anxiety--the soul torturings of that light and malicious imp, Love, took possession of the heart of De Coucy; and he calculated, within the hundred thousandth part of a line, how much chance there existed of Isadore of the Mount not loving him,--and of her loving some one else,--and of her father, who was rich, rejecting him, who was poor,--and of his having promised her to some one else;--and so on to infinity. At length, weary of his own reasonings thereupon, and laughing at himself for combating the chimeras of his own imagination, he endeavoured to turn his thoughts to other things, humming as he went--
"'The man's a fool--the man's a fool
That lets Love use him for a tool:
But is that man the gods above,
Himself unused, who uses love.'
"--And so will I," continued De Coucy mentally. "It shall prompt me to great deeds, and to mighty efforts. I will go to every court in Europe, and challenge them all to do battle with me upon the question. I will fight in every combat and every skirmish that can be met with, till they cannot refuse her to me, out of pure shame."