And hardly waiting for our acceptance, he bade the landlord fetch them at once from his house. I confess, however, that until the beasts actually appeared, I had some small doubts of my own of their existence. As to their being a present from Guise, that was of a piece with the tales of his other adventures, the conceit of the man being such, that he surrounded every moment of his life with imaginary exploits, which he fully believed he had himself performed. Nevertheless his good nature was so great that he would have divided his last livre with a total stranger, had he been asked, and it was in this way that he had been wheedled out of the fine estate of Chenonceaux by Madame La Grande Seneschale, whose avarice was as great as her effrontery. We had, of course, no intention of profiting by his easy disposition, and knowing he was in straits, and being unwilling to borrow his nags, we prevailed upon him to sell them to us for a hundred crowns apiece, which, after some demure, that the price we offered was too great, our friend finally accepted. We would still have to take one of our own horses with his two, but Badehorn rode a light weight, and we had but a bare twenty leagues before us, as the crow flies, to reach Orleans. It was now past midday, so, leaving the remaining two of our beasts with St. Cyergue, we mounted and prepared to set out, having hopes to reach Nanteuil by evening, where we could rest the horses and ourselves in the house of M. de Villequier. Wishing the Baron good-by and a speedy termination of his temporary exile, and bearing from him a number of confused messages to the greatest personages in France, which we promised faithfully to deliver, we rode out of the crowded courtyard of the Green Man into the little square of Chenonceaux, at the same moment that M. de Rabutin, the Captain of the Castle, who was taking an airing on foot, with a half-dozen of his friends, entered it at the other end. CHAPTER IX HOW PONTHIEU CARRIED THE ADMIRAL’S LETTER IT was market day, as I have said, and the little square was full to overflow with a chaffering, haggling crowd, that pressed round the shelter of the shops, and squeezed, pushed, and shouted about the stalls and booths erected in the open, on the rough and still sleet-covered cobble-stones of the uneven pavement. We made our way slowly through the heaving mass of red-faced and brown-handed country folk, all talking at the same time, and in the same breath retailing some gossip of the hamlet side, and holding fast to a deal, or throwing in a prayer to St. Jean of Bléré, as they beat down a price.