“Your Majestie’s most humble and obedient “sone and servant, “CHARLES; “and your humble slave and doge, “STEENIE.” On the following day, February the twenty-third, the Prince and Buckingham left Paris at the early hour of three, and proceeded towards Bayonne. Their journey, meantime, had become the theme of conversation in England, and even on the day on which the Prince set sail, it was the theme of general discussion;[423] yet, abroad, so slowly did tidings travel in those days, they were still able to preserve their incognito. Footnote 423: Nichols, vol. iv., p. 809, note. At Bordeaux, however, they nearly revealed their secret. Tired, probably, of their peasant suits, they bought fine riding coats, “all of one colour and of a noble simplicity,” and the proud demeanour of Buckingham, and the high-bred grace of the Prince, could no longer be concealed. They were invited by the Duc d’Epernon to be his guests, and Cottington was employed to refuse the invitation, so as to avoid exciting suspicion. He was therefore obliged to tell the Duke that he and his party were “gentlemen of mean degree, and formed to little courtship,” and the excuse was received; otherwise, the Duke, being, as Sir Henry Wotton observes, “no superficial man in the practices of the world, might have pierced somewhat deeper than their outsides.”[424] Footnote 424: Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 216. The season of Lent was now advanced, and the travellers could obtain no meat in the inns. Sir Henry Wotton relates an anecdote, which, as he remarks, is characteristic of the Prince, who is the chief hero of the little incident. “There was, near Bayonne, a herd of goats with their young ones, upon which sight, Sir Robert Graham tells the Marquis he would snap up one of the kids, and make some shift to carry him close to their lodging; which, the Prince overhearing, ‘Why, Richard,’ says he, ‘do you think you may practise here your old tricks again upon the border?’ Upon which words, they first give the goatherd good contentment, and then, while the Marquis and his servant (being set on foot) were chasing the kid about the stack, the Prince, from horseback, killed him in the head with a Scottish pistol.”[425] Footnote 425: Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. The lofty bearing of Buckingham, and courteous demeanour of Charles, were not unnoticed by the Count de Grammont, the Governor of Bayonne, that “jealous key,” as Sir Henry Wotton terms it, of France. He perceived that they were gentlemen of much more consequence and higher station than their dress implied; nevertheless, he permitted them, courteously, to pass forward.