‘In any other province in France, save Brittany, this was smiting the root for ever of the little tree his pride and affection wish’d to see reblossom. But in Brittany, there being a provision for this, he avail’d himself of it; and taking an occasion when the states were assembled at Rennes, the Marquis, attended with his two boys, entered the court; and having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which, though seldom claim’d, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from his side—Here, said he, take it; and be trusty guardians of it, till better times put me in condition to reclaim it. ‘The president accepted the Marquis’s sword—he stayed a few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house—and departed. ‘The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico, and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlook’d-for bequests from distant branches of his house, return’d home to reclaim his nobility and to support it. ‘It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen to any traveller but a sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition: I call it solemn—it was so to me. ‘The Marquis enter’d the court with his whole family: he supported his lady—his eldest son supported his sister, and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother—he put his handkerchief to his face twice— ‘—There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had approach’d within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family—he reclaim’d his sword. His sword was given him; and the moment he got it into his hand he drew it almost out of the scabbard—’twas the shining face of a friend he had once given up—he look’d attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same—when observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it—I think I saw a tear fall upon the place: I could not be deceived by what followed. ‘“I shall find,” said he, “some _other way_ to get it off.” ‘When the Marquis had said this, he return’d his sword into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it—and with his wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walk’d out. ‘O how I envied him his feelings!’ It shows a touching innocence of the imagination to believe—for probably Sterne did believe—or to expect his readers to believe, in a _noblesse_ at once so honourable and so theatrical.