"What came from Hellewyl goes back to Hellewyl, and where better could it go?" said he, holding out his hands. They were open, hollowed to a bowl, and in the hollow lay a little heap of coins to which patches of moist earth still clung. They were mostly silver, crowns and three-crown pieces, with here and there the red glint of a ducat. For thirty years Martin had served Solignac, heart, head and hand, and now, as the shadows of age darkened round him, the gains of his service failed to cover his two palms. The thought of how we had taken so much and given so little smote me, and the tears that filled my eyes were in part shame. "What are these, old friend?" and I put my hands behind my back. "Bread and meat for the road to Paris." "A Hellewyl of Solignac travels at his own charges." "'Tis the right of the King--" he began. "But I am no King," I cut in, "nothing but a homeless, ruined man." "My King," he answered. "Take them, Monsieur Gaspard; would you shame an old friend? Your pardon, but the word is your own. Take them, of what use are they to me? If I had died last night, they'd have lain in the earth till some lout ploughed them up a hundred years hence." But we compromised. They were my debt, but he should keep them, paying our way as we rode to Paris as friend and friend. Thus it was that I turned my back for the first time on Solignac, travelling at the charges of my own servant and with no more gear in the world than the ragged, smoke-stained suit upon my back. Brigitta? To be frank, I had forgotten Brigitta, and Martin was too cunning a diplomatist to remind me of her. CHAPTER V PARIS IN "EIGHTY-THREE" Of all the virtues that adorn mankind, none is so common as the virtue of necessity--or so little sought after. By reason of that virtue, and because a slender purse is a great persuader to modesty, we kept by the villages, avoiding Bethune, Arras, Montdidier and their like, though omitting the last of these, at least, was little mortification of the flesh, for the town had never fully recovered from its harrying in '75 when the King took it from the Burgundians. For the most part, these villages were mere warty outcroppings of filth upon the face of a fair country, some not even with a wine shop so poor were they. But if we lay hardly, ate coarsely, and at times carried out in the morning more than we had brought in at night, we paid little; so that our bloodletting was where we could most spare it. Boorish roughness we met in plenty, but no discourtesy. The poor folk were more accustomed to being robbed than paid, and where the company was more villainous than common we slipped our bed across the door, and so rested in peace.