I had studied the troubled times of Etienne Marcel in the
treasures of the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, and I knew every
kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiegne,
Senlis--they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light
of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart.
Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the
sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliotheque Nationale,
tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin
and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would
be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon
the footprints of contemporary armies. To compare the _variae
lectiones_ of two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish
is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the
field note-book of a living Hun with the _dossier_ of a contemporary
Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and
the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so
very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but
the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys
that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the
ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I
lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket
volume of M. Zeller's _Histoire de France racontee par les
contemporains_, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marches,"
ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I
read, it seemed as though I were back in the department _du Contentieux_
of the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German
officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marches in the
delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French:

There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of
the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How
blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on a rich
abbe, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from
Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with
the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices
from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours
or was to ransom at our sweet