green, and a beautiful; the home of arts
and arms, of chivalry and romance, and (however sadly stained by the
excesses of modern times) 'twas the unbought grace of nations once, and
the seat of ancient renown and disciplined valor.

And of all that fair land of France, whose beauty is so bright and
bravery is so famous, there is no spot greener or fairer than that one
over which our travellers wended, and which stretches between the good
towns of Vendemiaire and Nivose. 'Tis common now to a hundred thousand
voyagers: the English tourist, with his chariot and his Harvey's Sauce,
and his imperials; the bustling commis-voyageur on the roof of the
rumbling diligence; the rapid malle-poste thundering over the chaussee
at twelve miles an hour--pass the ground hourly and daily now: 'twas
lonely and unfrequented at the end of that seventeenth century with
which our story commences.

Along the darkening mountain-paths the two gentlemen (for such their
outward bearing proclaimed them) caracoled together. The one, seemingly
the younger of the twain, wore a flaunting feather in his barret-cap,
and managed a prancing Andalusian palfrey that bounded and curveted
gayly. A surcoat of peach-colored samite and a purfled doublet of vair
bespoke him noble, as did his brilliant eye, his exquisitely chiselled
nose, and his curling chestnut ringlets.

Youth was on his brow; his eyes were dark and dewy, like spring-violets;
and spring-roses bloomed upon his cheek--roses, alas! that bloom and die
with life's spring! Now bounding over a rock, now playfully whisking off
with his riding rod a floweret in his path, Philibert de Coquelicot rode
by his darker companion.

His comrade was mounted upon a destriere of the true Norman breed,
that had first champed grass on the green pastures of Aquitaine. Thence
through Berry, Picardy, and the Limousin, halting at many a city
and commune, holding joust and tourney in many a castle and manor
of Navarre, Poitou, and St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the warrior and his
charger reached the lonely spot where now we find them.

The warrior who bestrode the noble beast was in sooth worthy of the
steed which bore him. Both were caparisoned in the fullest trappings
of feudal war. The arblast, the mangonel, the demiculverin, and the
cuissart of the period, glittered upon the neck and chest of the
war-steed; while the rider, with chamfron and catapult, with ban and
arriere-ban, morion and tumbrel, battle-axe and riffla