"Will Monseigneur allow me to remind him that the honest and faithful Elyot has had time to put by a handsome sum for the heir of his former masters. You may maintain a royal establishment, Monseigneur; and the young men, who are your tenants, and whom you have drilled in playing at war, are in duty bound and will be only too glad to follow you to battle in good earnest. It is your right to call them about you, as you well know, Monseigneur." "And we will use this right, never fear, Aloyse; we will use it." "Is Monseigneur really willing to receive all his domestics and retainers, and the tenants of all his fiefs and baronies, who are consumed with the desire to pay their respects to him?" "Not yet, please, good Aloyse; but tell Martin-Guerre to saddle a horse and be ready to go with me. I must, first of all, take a ride about the neighborhood." "Are you going in the direction of Vimoutiers?" said good Aloyse, smiling mischievously. "Perhaps so. Don't I owe old Enguerrand a visit and my thanks?" "And with Enguerrand's congratulations, Monseigneur will not find it at all amiss to receive those of a certain fair damsel called Diane. Am I not right?" "But," said Gabriel, laughing, "that same fair damsel has been my wife and I her husband these three years; since I was fifteen, that is to say, and she nine." Aloyse lost herself in thought. "Monseigneur," said she, "if I did not know how sober-minded and open you are, notwithstanding your extreme youth, and that your every emotion is a serious and profound one, I should keep back the words which I am going to venture to say to you. But what is a joking matter to others is often a matter of serious importance to you. Remember, Monseigneur, that no one knows whose daughter Diane is. One day, the wife of Enguerrand, who had gone to Fontainebleau at that time, with his master, Comte de Vimoutiers, found, as she was going into her house, a child in a cradle at her door, and a heavy purse of gold on her table. In the purse was a considerable sum of money, half of an engraved ring, and a paper on which was this one word, 'Diane.' Berthe, Enguerrand's wife, had no child of her own, and she welcomed joyfully these other maternal duties which were asked at her hands. But on her return to Vimoutiers she died, just as my husband died, to whom your father intrusted you, Monseigneur; and as it was a woman who brought up the male orphan, so it was a man to whose care the female child fell. But Enguerrand and I, both intrusted with a like task, have exchanged our duties? and I have tried to make of Diane a good, pious woman, while Enguerrand has brought you up to be clever and wise. Naturally you have known Diane, and naturally, too, you have become attached to her. But you are the Comte de Montgommery, as can be proved by authentic documents and by public repute, while no one has yet appeared to lay claim to Diane, by producing the other half of the golden ring.