Dropping the reins on Ninus' neck, Martin jumped to the ground, and went on his knee in the dust.
"The Lord, He knows, Monsieur Gaspard, that the leaving you is none of my doing," he said between the mumbles of his mouth upon my hand. "If I'd ha' thought it would come to this then the Lord again He knows I'd ha' sooner faced Jan Meert and his twenty devils and so never have been here to taste the bitterness. There were but three of us, Monsieur Gaspard; Babette is gone, now you will go, and I only shall be left, a poor, miserable, dried skin of a man that—that—would give his life to go first," and he broke down, weeping.
Laughing, but in no laughing mood, I leaned aside, and tried to pull him to his feet. But he would not move, and when at last I drew my hand away—for Monseigneur was waiting for me—its back was wet with his tears. Nor, so long as we were in sight, did he rise from his knee.
"Ah!" said Monseigneur, as we rode on, "Master Martin has a heart in him for all his years, and is not ashamed to show it. I fear he would never make a courtier, he has not learned to forget love, and be ungrateful."
CHAPTER XI
THE PLOT OF THE FOUR NATIONS
When, out of his experience, the devil formed schools to teach apt humanity, he set them in the extremes of life, the noisome dens of packed cities and the courts of kings. Misery forgets God, that by theft and murder it may live out yet one more unhappy day, and greatness climbs upon its own shame to yet more dishonoured honour.
Never was there such a place as Plessis for intrigue. From Monsieur de Beaujeu, the King's son-in-law, down to the kitchen scullions, there was not a man but mined or countermined to gain some private advantage; nor, in all the palace, was there a finger-nail—mine among the rest—but itched to scratch the King's favour. That much I learned in my seven days of waiting.
Through Monsieur de Commines' influence almost every door was open to me, and by his instructions I used my liberty freely.
"Who knows to what service you may be put," he added; "Plessis is not to be turned inside out in a week, but a week may teach you not to show yourself a fool."