These tidings having been obtained, I had nothing farther to detain me at Cubzac; and, paying the host his reckoning, I mounted to my chamber, clothed myself in my good suit of steel, and, after calling loudly, but in vain, for Andriot, to make the rest of my goods and chattels into as small packages as possible, that it might be carried more easily, I descended to the courtyard to see what had become of my young attendant and my new follower, the latter of whom I had not seen during the whole morning.
I found them together, behind some stables at the back of the auberge, chaffering with a sturdy farmer of the neighbourhood in regard to a proposed exchange of Master Moric Endem's piece of lean cattle for a fine, fresh, sturdy, but rather vicious horse belonging to the other. Moric had offered, it seems, to give his own horse, and all the remains of the crown which I had given him the day before, together with another crown that Andriot had lent him, for the more powerful and befitting charger which had been placed before his eyes. The farmer, however, stood out for another piece of money, and I was fain now to come forward and give it, though the price seemed to be somewhat exorbitant.[[1]] The horse that Moric already possessed was anything but fit for the journey; and, as he willingly agreed that I was to be considered the proprietor of the beast now purchased, it gave me a greater command over him than I might otherwise have obtained.
After all this was concluded and the horse in his hands, I gave a glance towards my new follower's figure, and saw that it certainly was as much improved as his form and features would admit. The buff jerkin was now cleared from its rusty stains and spots of dirt, and was shining in the full freshness of chalk and yellow ochre. It seemed scarcely dry as yet, indeed; but that circumstance he did not appear to mind; and the plain steel cap with flying cheek-pieces, into which he had thrust his head, had been painted with a sort of Indian black since the night before, so as to look very smart, without offering a very shining or conspicuous point to the eye of a watchful enemy.
No other piece of armour had yet been put on, I suppose in order to give the buff jerkin time to dry; but when, after having told him to hasten his preparations for departure, I came down once more with Andriot to mount my horse, I found Master Moric armed from head to foot, with his cuirass also painted black; thus hiding, in a great measure, the unseemly patch upon his right side.
If I contemplated him with some attention, well pleased with his neatly-trimmed beard and well-washed face, he did not seem to regard me less narrowly or with less apparent pleasure, scanning all the pieces of my arms with an experienced eye, and rubbing his hands joyfully as he saw how easily they sat upon me. The ease with which I managed my horse too, though the brute kicked and plunged most unmercifully on first being mounted, gave him no less satisfaction; and it was only upon Andriot that he bestowed some counsels and some reproof in regard to the unsoldierly manner in which he had put on his morion. When all was completed, we set out from Cubzac, and took our road onward towards Barbezieux. As we went, Moric treated me with a large portion of his conversation, amusing by its quaint drollery, but occasionally tiresome from touches of that rhodomontade whereof he had been accused. Were his own word to be believed, there was no great action which had been enacted during the last half century that he had not either absolutely performed himself or had a very considerable and important share therein. But he even went beyond that; and when he began telling a story of any one else, it very often happened that he entirely forgot, before he came to the end of his tale, the original hero with whom he set out, dropped the third person, took up the first, changed the personage spoken of to himself, and performed all the last acts he had to relate in his own person.
The most ludicrous instance of this kind of transformation took place while he was giving me an account of the tournament at which King Henry II. had been killed not many years before, and at which Moric had been present. He asserted that the fault which occasioned the death of the king was entirely on the part of Montgomery; but, before he had finished his tale, he entirely forgot that declaration, got warm and heated with the subject, was seized with the peculiar sort of cupidity which induced him so constantly to appropriate the actions of others, and becoming Montgomery himself, described how he had killed the King of France, and explained, with the utmost perspicuity and exactitude, the eager feelings with which he had been animated, and which prevented him from recollecting in time that it was necessary to throw away instantly the broken staff of his lance.
I could not help laughing at this absurdity; but he took it all in good part, laughed himself, and declared that it was every word true, except that he was the person who did it.
In many other respects, however, his conversation was full of interest. He was an old veteran soldier, and full of information upon every practical point, both of military tactics and military habits. As far as study could render me acquainted with the subject, I was so already; but I gained more useful information from my new follower in a few hours, more directions for employing well the science that I had acquired, than I could have done from the best master of the art in weeks or months.
From him, too, I learned all the habits and manners of the camp; the rules, the regulations, the etiquettes, which I had before no notion of. What could and might be done, what could not be done, he told me; and I found that, constituted as armies of that period were--low in discipline, licentious in habits--with a little complaisance to the great leaders, and the observation of a few insignificant regulations, the captain of such a party as I proposed to raise might, in fact, do anything that he liked, and act totally independent of the general during almost the whole of his campaign, provided he showed himself daring and fearless, and ready to fight whenever he was called upon.
As we were conversing in this manner while we pursued our onward way, we came to the high grounds near the little hamlet of Marceau, and, looking down over the country below, we saw a considerable number of people riding along, as if in great haste and confusion, upon the bank of the river, and at some distance to the right another party appeared upon the edge of the little slope, while the sun, glittering upon their arms, left no doubt whatever that they were troopers of some kind.