"I know that your abjuration did not make a great sensation," replied De Beuvre; "but, however that may be, it is too early for me to do it; I prefer to fight, and I have five or six years of activity and good health to do it." "But you are very stout, neighbor!" "You think that I am growing stout, because you do not see yourself getting thin, neighbor! It is you who are becoming hollower, not I more corpulent." "Very well! I understand your reasons for making this campaign. You think that it will be successful; but you are mistaken. The leaders and the troops, the bourgeois and the ministers, all fight gallantly on a certain day; but on the following day, they separate; they abhor one another, they insult one another and each goes his own way. The game has been lost ever since Saint Bartholomew, and the King of the Huguenots won it only by abandoning the cause. He chose to be a Frenchman first of all; and this that you propose will be of advantage neither to France nor to yourself." De Beuvre could not endure contradiction. He persisted, and taunted the marquis with his lack of religious principle, albeit he himself was the most sceptical of men. As he listened to him, Bois-Doré saw plainly that he was tempted by the excellent terms which the king was compelled to grant the Calvinist nobles, whenever the royal cause received a check. De Beuvre was not a man to sell himself, like so many others, but to fight stubbornly, and, if victorious, to take advantage without scruple of the opportunity to be most exacting in his demands. "Since your mind is made up," said the marquis gently, "you ought to have told me so at once, instead of asking my advice. I have only one other consideration to urge upon you. You propose to equip yourself and take the best of your people with you for this campaign. Think of the annoyance that may be caused your daughter if the Jesuits should take it into their heads to call Monsieur de Condé's attention to your absence! And be sure that they will not fail to do it, that the château of La Motte-Seuilly will be occupied in the king's name by evil-minded men; that your daughter will be exposed to insult----" "I do not fear that," said De Beuvre. "I shall be supposed to be at Orléans, where everyone knows that I have a law-suit. I will go thence, quietly, toward Guyenne, where I will assume some old _nom de guerre_, as the custom is, to protect my property and my family during my absence; I will be Captain Chandelle or Captain La Paille, or Captain--no matter what." "All that is often done, I know," rejoined Bois-Doré, "but it doesn't always succeed; I promise to defend your château as effectively as I and my people can do it; but if I were not afraid of making an indelicate suggestion, I would offer to take your Lauriane into my family during your absence."