"I had hoped, sir," I replied, "from what I heard from good Martin Vern, the merchant, that your highness was likely to obtain some supplies more easily." "He has done somewhat, he has done somewhat," replied the prince; "and he deals liberally himself; but he is obliged to negotiate on my part with Jews and Lombards innumerable, and he has now gone to Paris with but small hope of getting their bills discounted except at exorbitant interest." The news of Martin Vern having quitted the camp without giving me any acknowledgment whatever for the money he had received from me, was, as may be imagined, not very satisfactory to me; and I remained musing for a moment or two, while the prince wrote the order that I had demanded, and made some memorandums in regard to what was to be done in carrying it into execution. "Come, De Cerons," he said, in a light tone, after he had done, "you seem sad, my good friend. Kneel down here. We will make a knight of you before we part, as young knights, they say, are always gay-hearted. Condé shall strike the stroke, Montgomery shall buckle on the spurs, and, lo! where comes D'Andelot, who was dubbed by the hand of the great Francis himself on his first field of battle, to buckle on the sword." Certainly it could scarcely be by hands more distinguished that the ceremonies of knighthood were performed, and I might well go back to my quarters with a heart rejoicing in having taken a step far higher than any I had previously reached in the career which I had chosen for myself. Out of the small stock that remained to me, I gave a hundred crowns among the men as a largesse on my knighthood, and then immediately sought the room in the farmhouse where Louise had remained in conversation with good old La Tour and Dame Marguelette. Their rejoicing for her arrival had by this time poured itself forth, and they now all gathered round me with the strange mixture of feelings which I knew existed in their bosoms, causing an odd confusion of manner, which can only be understood when we recollect that those who now surrounded me remembered me chiefly as a boy--even as a child, whom they had been accustomed to direct, exhort, and to control, and that now the very same people found that child commanding, providing for, and protecting them with a tone of independence and authority, and proofs of power and right strangely opposed to all their former ideas.