"Can it be that I should have done better to renounce all personal ambition, to content myself with being simply Henri II.'s general, and to limit my achievements to the recovery of Milan and the liberation of Sienna? Here am I in this kingdom of Naples of which in my dreams I have heard myself called the king; but I am without allies, and shall soon be without provisions; and all my officers, with my brother at their head, with not an energetic, capable mind among them, are already beginning to be disheartened, and to lose their courage, I can see plainly." At this moment the duke heard a step behind him. He turned quickly, with an angry greeting on his lips for the bold intruder; but when he saw who it was, instead of reproving him, he held out his hand to him. "You are not the man, Vicomte d'Exmès, are you," said he, "you are not the man, my dear Gabriel, ever to think twice about going on with an undertaking, because bread is scarce and the enemy plenty?--you, who were the last to go out of Metz, and the first to enter Valenza and Campli. But have you come to tell me anything new, my friend?" "Yes, Monseigneur, a courier has arrived from France," Gabriel replied. "He is, I think, the bearer of letters from your illustrious brother, Monseigneur le Cardinal de Lorraine. Shall I have him brought before you?" "No, but let him hand you the despatches that he has, Viscount, and do you bring them to me yourself, please." Gabriel bowed, left the tent, and came back almost immediately, bringing a letter sealed with the arms of the house of Lorraine. The six years that had passed since our story opened had scarcely changed our old friend Gabriel, except that his features had taken on a more manly and determined expression. He would at once have been picked out as a man who had put his own worth to the proof and knew it well. But he had always the same calm and serious brow, the same true and open look, and, let us say at once, the same heart full of the hopes and illusions of youth; and well it might be so, for he was only twenty-four even now. The Duc de Guise was thirty-seven; and although his was a noble and generous nature, his mind had already returned from many places where Gabriel's had never yet been; and more than one disappointed ambition, more than one burnt-out passion, more than one fruitless contest, had sunk his eye deep in his head, and worn the hair from his temples. Yet he none the less understood and loved the chivalrous and devoted character of Gabriel; and an irresistible attraction drew the man of years and experience toward the trustful youth. He took his brother's letter from Gabriel's hands, and said to him before opening it,--