"No; he said many things which it were better a boy should not know were said. Conceit is only too ready to take youth by the arm."
"And am I such a boy? Surely four-and-twenty——"
"Are you so old? It always comes as an astonishment when those we love are no longer children. It is then we realize how the years have passed."
"So old, Uncle. Four-and-twenty is no boy."
"A man in years, a boy at heart. Be a boy at heart as long as you can, Stephen, for so will you keep your conscience clean before God. And yet what use has the King for a boy's service?"
"Teach the boy to be a man in thought that he may find a use for himself, Uncle; and who can do that so well as you?"
Commines let his hands fall to his sides and turned away, pacing the room with short strides. His man's thoughts were not always such as he would care to teach Stephen La Mothe.
"To the King's service every man must bring his own thought."
"And did Monsieur de Perche call me fool when he wrote to you?"
"No: but the little things of Marbahan are poor training for the greater things of Valmy, of Blois, of Plessis, of Amboise, of Paris."