About his five or six years' absence in France (the date of his return is uncertain) Ralegh is reticent, partly, as Edwards suggests, in obedience to the maxim laid down in his "History of the World" which runs, "Whosoever in writing a Modern Historie shall follow Truth too near the heels it may haply strike out his teeth;" and partly, too, for the reason that his experiences as a boy would be adventurous rather than suggestive. He would have been too young to be enough behind the scenes to know the motives of movements in which he took part, and the motives would alone lend a broad or historical value to the adventures. Among relations, youngness is commonly taken into full account. And Ralegh, for all his ability, had not probably the opportunity given him of seeing things other than as isolated incidents. As likely as not, he was asked to leave the tent or the room when matters of moment were about to be discussed. But certain anecdotes he recalls in his "History of the World," one of which is well worth telling in his own good words, because it shows the manner of fighting that prevailed in these wars: "I saw in the third Civil War of France certain caves in Languedoc which had but one entrance, and that very narrow, cut out in the midway of high rocks, which we knew not how to enter by any ladder or engine; till at last by certain bundles of straw, let down by an iron chain, and a weighty stone in the midst, those that defended it were so smothered as they rendered themselves with their plate, money and other goods therein hidden." He was not, however, always among the caves and hedgerows; almost certainly he was in Paris in 1572, sheltering with Philip Sidney in the house of the ambassador, Walsingham, when the terrible and famous massacre took place during the night of St. Bartholomew's Eve, in which the friends of the Duke of Guise boasted that more Protestants were slain than in the whole of the twelve years of the war. CHAPTER III TOWARDS MANHOOD Friendship with George Gascoyne--Its importance--Ralegh in London--The arch-gossip Aubrey--Elizabethan London--Ralegh and Sir Humfrey Gilbert--The beginning of the great enterprise. Ralegh returned from France in 1575 or 1576; and there are three years of his life--important years, from the age of twenty-three to twenty-six--which contain little or no record of his doings. Some authors, on the slenderest authority, maintain that he trailed a pike in the Lowlands, under Sir John Norris. But this is unlikely. The time of his possible presence there has been adroitly whittled down by William Oldys to the early part of the year 1578, and quite recently a document has been discovered bearing his signature, and the date of the deed is April 11th, 1578. If the signature is genuine, and expert evidence points to the fact that it is so, this is an additional, almost conclusive, proof that during these three years he remained in England.