"Some words need a good many letters, and if the letters in a word are not the right letters, and are not set in a befitting order, it will be of no use for any man, even the most learned scholar, to try to tell what that word is. So I soon found that for many of the words I could not remember the letters, and of those letters I did remember there were some that I could not make, for I had forgotten their shape. But I would not tell my master that, for it would have been a sorrowful thing to have fallen from my high place as the most learned person in our company, not to speak of the punishment I might have expected. So I wrote on, making the best words I could devise with the letters at my command, and urging my master to repeat every sentence, so that I should be sure to get it straight and fair; and in that way I learned the whole letter by heart, and read it to him, when I had finished it, so that he was greatly gratified. 'Let me see the letter, my good Jasto,' said he; and when he looked at it, he said, 'The words seem very much like each other'—which was the truth, indeed, for most of them had the same letters in them, measured out in very much the same measurement. 'But it all looks simple enough,' he went on to say, 'and I greatly desire that I could read it, but that is beyond my powers.' And then he made his mark, which his seneschal well knew, and the letter was done. "Thereupon he called for a messenger to take it in all haste to his castle, but I told him that he could have no better messenger than I should be, because, having writ the letter, I could read it to the person to whom it was sent, if it should so be that he could not read it himself. 'But old Hubert can read, else I would not send him a letter,' said my lord. But I answered that, if he had never seen my writing, it might be so strange to him that it would take much time for him to understand the proper slope and indication of the letters, and so the re-enforcements might be sorely hindered in their coming. Therefore it was that I was sent, and I so saved my life; for, shortly after, the battle came off, and, if I had been there, I know I should have been killed, as most of my knight's men were. But I was safe in the castle, and when I went back with the men and the horses and the armor, I met my lord coming to his castle, and right glad was he to see me with my company, for he was in such sore plight that he was even afraid of thieves, although there were but few of them to be met with then, being mostly in the wars. And therefore, I, being fresh and unwounded, took the lead among the men-at-arms, and felt high in my lord's favor, and this was far better than being able to scratch off a poor letter that could be read." "But what said the seneschal to your letter?" asked Louis. "Oh, nought at all," answered Jasto. "I read it to him out of my head, and showed him his master's mark."