"Ay, I was young then," Tavannes cried in turn, his eyes glistening. "St. Quentin! It was the tenth of August. And you were new with me, and seized my rein--" "And we rode off together, my lord--of the last, of the last, as God sees me! And striking as we went, so that they left us for easier game." "It was so, good sword! I remember it as if it had been yesterday!" "And at Cerisoles, the Battle of the Plain, in the old Spanish wars, that was most like a joust of all the pitched fields I ever saw--at Cerisoles, where I caught your horse? You mind me? It was in the shock when we broke Guasto's line--" "At Cerisoles?" Count Hannibal muttered slowly. "Why, man, I--" "I caught your horse, and mounted you afresh? You remember, my lord? And at Landriano, where Leyva turned the tables on us again." Count Hannibal stared. "Landriano?" he muttered bluntly. "'Twas in '29, forty years ago and more! My father, indeed--" "And at Rome--at Rome, my lord? _Mon Dieu_! in the old days at Rome! When the Spanish company scaled the wall--Ruiz was first, I next--was it not my foot you held? And was it not I who dragged you up, while the devils of Swiss pressed us hard? Ah, those were days, my lord! I was young then, and you, my lord, young too, and handsome as the morning--" "You rave!" Tavannes cried, finding his tongue at last. "Rome? You rave, old man! Why, I was not born in those days. My father even was a boy! It was in '27 you sacked it--five-and-forty years ago!" The old man passed his hands over his heated face, and, as a man roused suddenly from sleep looks, he looked round the room. The light died out of his eyes--as a light blown out in a room; his form seemed to shrink, even while the others gazed at him, and he sat down. "No, I remember," he muttered slowly. "It was Prince Philibert of Chalons, my lord of Orange." "Dead these forty years!" "Ay, dead these forty years! All dead!" the old man whispered, gazing at his gnarled hand, and opening and shutting it by turns. "And I grow childish! 'Tis time, high time, I followed them! It trembles now; but have no fear, my lord, this hand will not tremble then. All dead! Ay, all dead!" He sank into a mournful silence; and Tavannes, after gazing at him awhile in rough pity, fell to his own meditations, which were gloomy enough. The day was beginning to wane, and with the downward turn, though the sun still shone brightly through the southern windows, a shadow seemed to fall across his thoughts. They no longer rioted in a turmoil of defiance as in the forenoon. In its turn, sober reflection marshalled the past before his eyes. The hopes of a life, the ambitions of a life, moved in sombre procession, and things done and things left undone, the sovereignty which Nostradamus had promised, the faces of men he had spared and of men he had not spared--and the face of one woman.