Why, then, do I give that to the world which I have successfully influenced Monsieur de Commines to suppress? Just because of these same evil tongues. Let no man dream that any act of his ever dies: good or bad, it is co-existent with his life, if not with the sun itself. What I had hoped was buried in the dust of the past, ghouls, infamous devourers of men's reputations, have disinterred, and for the sake of those who are to come after me the whole truth must be told. My children's love and reverence are more to me than all I possess, whether in Flanders or Navarre. Partly I tell the tale myself, and partly it is told by another outside of myself, but whether it be Gaspard de Helville in person or that other who speaks, this I solemnly assert, both are alike true.
CHAPTER II
THE BRUISINGS OF A FRIEND
It has been said that the first third of a man's life is the sowing, the second the growing, and the last the mowing, but with seedtime this story has nothing to do. The first more than twenty years of life may be brushed aside. It is enough that in them I lost first, my father; then, fifteen years later, my mother; and for three years had been my own master; if a man could call himself his own who was the slave and worship of his mother's nurse and his father's squire. The story then begins on a late spring day in 1483.
It was curious, though at the time the coincidence passed unnoticed, but so sure as I pressed Roland hard, rasping the poor willing brute's ribs cruelly with both spurs, just so surely did Martin meet with a trifling accident that delayed him. Once, as we galloped down from La Crêle to the river, he broke a stirrup leather. Once, too, he dropped his ash stick and had to go back for it; and once, as we rode round the pinewood at Berseghem, Ninus picked up a stone. At least, Martin said he did, and in face of his anxious concern as he bent over the upturned hoof how could I be angry? Ninus was his faithful servant even as Martin was mine, and that a horse should pick up a stone is no one's blame. The most I could do was to hasten him as urgently as my diffidence dared.
"Even as it is we may be too late," I added.
From the hoof in his palm he looked sourly up.
"That is the girl's fault. What business has a Hellewyl of Solignac philandering after a cow-herd's daughter? Which of you two had the redder face I don't know, hers from honest sun and weather, yours from you know what best yourself. Come now, is it an honest thing to play at courting under the trees with such a girl? What's more, she despised you for it. I saw that in her face when I said 'Solignac's a-fire' 'A-fire!' she cried; 'who fired it?' and her black eyes grew hard as she looked at you. 'Jan Meert,' I told her, and what was her answer? 'God be good to us! but that's great news.' Yes, it's her fault. All you own in the world flaring to ashes, and you philandering miles away." Then, letting Ninus slip his foot down, which he did with no sign of tenderness, Martin said a strange thing. "God bless her for it. We can ride on now, Monsieur Gaspard," and he gathered his reins into his left hand.
Until he had mounted I made no reply. Training had made me a patient man, and Martin, my one follower, was my best friend. I knew his dour, loyal nature too well to be angry at his frankness. For fifty years—that is all his life—he had served Solignac, and I, half his age, was to him no more than a child to be humoured when I could not safely be driven. Besides, if ever men had need for haste, we had, and I was not such a fool as to please my temper at the cost of a solid advantage. That he hated the girl Brigitta I had long known, but that, again, was loyalty to the house that fed him. Martin was still too much of the peasant not to despise his own class.
But once he was in the saddle I went back on my question, in different or more direct words, perhaps, but the sense was the same.