He received my gratitude with great modesty, said that the Lord had guided his arm in the fight, and expressed himself with a humility that was in complete contrast to the lion-like fury shown by him in the combat. Judging him, from his phrases, to be a Huguenot, I asked whether he was one, by birth, as I was. "By birth, from my mother," he replied. "My father was a Catholic, and in order to win my mother, he pretended to have joined the reformers. That deceit was the least of his many rascally deeds. He was one of the chosen instruments of the devil,--a violent, roystering cut-throat, but a good soldier, as was shown in Italy and at St. Quentin, Calais, Jarnac, and elsewhere. My mother, though only the daughter of an armorer's workman, was, in goodness, an angel. I thank God that she sometimes has the upper hand in me, although too often it is my father that prevails in me." He sighed heavily, and looked remorseful. In subsequent talk, as we rode, I learned that he was a soldier who had learned war, when a boy, under Coligny. He had fought at his father's side against Italians, Spanish, and English, and against his father in civil war. His father had died of a knife-wound, received, not in battle, but from a comrade in a quarrel about a woman, during the sacking of a town. His mother, when the news of the fate of her unworthy spouse reached the village where she lived, died of grief. The son was now returning from that village, which was near Orleans, and whither he had been on a visit to his relations, to Gascony, where he had been employed as a soldier in the small army with which Henri of Navarre made shift to garrison his towns. I told him that I hoped to find a place in that little army. "You do well, monsieur," said the young soldier, whose intelligence and native dignity made him, despite his peasant origin, one with whom a gentleman might converse. "Some day they will learn in France of what stuff the little Bearnaise King is made. I have stood watching him when he little supposed that a common soldier might take note of such things, and I have seen on his face the sign of great intentions. More goes on under that black hair than people guess at,--he can do more than drink and hunt and make love and jest and swear." He was in no haste to reach Gascony, he said, and so he intended to visit a former comrade who dwelt in a village some leagues from my road. In the afternoon, coming to the by-road which led to this place, he left me, with the words: "My name is Blaise Tripault, and should it happen that you ever enroll a company for the King of Navarre--" "The first name on my list shall be Blaise Tripault," I replied, smiling, and rode on, alone.