WHEN madam’s three envoys came to find themselves in the private apartments that had been given to them by the King of France, I had no words in which to express my amazement at Sir Richard Pendragon’s audacity. When I remembered that the Countess Sylvia was scarcely more than a child, with a beggarly retinue of three hundred men-at-arms, who would be wholly incapable of holding the castle of Montesina against the Castilian host; and when beside this dismal truth I set the dazzling story by which Sir Richard Pendragon had cozened one of the first princes of his age, I did not know whether it was not the bounden duty of a caballero of Spain to repair to King Louis and confess the fact. All the rest of that day this problem afflicted me sorely. In these circumstances my natural guide was the Count of Nullepart, who was an older head and a wiser; and one who, to judge by his conversation, was not unacquainted with the things that concern man’s higher nature. But when I mentioned to him my perplexity, his only reply was to break out into laughter. Finally, in my concern, I spoke of this matter to its author. He, with his court gravity still upon him, heard me out very patiently, and made answer with great solemnity. “Most noble marquis,” said he, “you must forgive the personal opinion of a good man, of a chief ornament of a shining age; but I do not think you would use these questions, marquis, had you a nicer familiarity with courts. Believe me, marquis, it is not the rule in such elevated places to observe that slavishness to the sober verities which at once betrays the mind of the provincial. I ask you, noble marquis, what kind of a figure should we have cut before the King’s majesty had we merely acquainted him with the sober and common aspect of the case? Do you suppose the first prince of his age would have lodged madam’s envoys in his palace--she who so recently has been whipped and put to bed by her old nurse? Do you think he would have had his ministers attend him in privy council? Do you think that this evening we should have been bidden to attend an entertainment? Not so, noble marquis. Had it come to the ear of the King’s majesty that the might of the neat little doxey was measured by three hundred men-at-arms and an old boarhound, in less than an hour we should have been sent packing out of the city. And, most noble marquis, let me perpend: one who hath the blood of kings under his doublet would be the last to hold this virtuous prince to contumely, for English Dickon and his friend the Sophy would, in these circumstances, have done the same.” “But, good Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, “my illustrious father has assured me that truth is always truth; that sober verity is sober verity equally in the king’s palace, in the marts of the middling, or in the pestilent hovels of the poor.”