and reassured in boldness he
was now ready even to play cards with the dread Marechale de
Noailles--her who it was reported once said, "That although our Lord was
born in a stable yet it must be remembered St. Joseph was of royal line
and not any common carpenter."

The pomp and glitter of the new life appealed immensely to the youthful
instincts of the Canadian. The Baron detailed to his fascinated listener
the composition, privileges, and duties of the Gardes--

"We are thirteen hundred, Repentigny, in four companies--the Scotch, the
Villeroy, the Noailles, and the Luxembourg, each over three hundred
persons; we relieve each other every three months. Just now it is the
turn of our company of Noailles. Of the three months, each man spends
one on guard at the Palace, one at the hunting-lodge, and one at
liberty; after that we withdraw to towns some distance apart, those of
the Noailles company to Troyes in Champagne." He told with pride of what
good stature and descent it was necessary to be to be received, how
keenly sought after even the commissions as privates were, hence the
fine picked appearance of the body. He dilated on the various
instruments and startling costumes of his company's band; on the style
of their horses and the magnificence of their reviews and parades; on
the superiority of the pale blue cross-belts which distinguished them,
over the silver and white ones of the Scotch company, the green of the
Villeroys, the yellow of the Luxembourgs. These differences, he
asserted, were the greatest distinctions under the sun.

Let us in our colder blood add to his description that each of
these companies consisted of one captain, one adjutant, two
lieutenant-commandants of squadron, three lieutenants, ten
sub-lieutenants, two standard-bearers, ten quartermasters, two
sub-quartermasters, twenty brigadiers or sergeants, two hundred and
eighty guards, one timbalier, and five trumpeters. Germain studied the
roll with great interest.

CHAPTER XX

DESCAMPATIVOS

Winter passed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters at
Troyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his passion for Cyrene coloured
every thought and scene with an artist's imposition of its own
interpretations. The world in which she dwelt was to him a vision, a
poem, a garden.

A change had, it is true, come over his character; he became more
desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection.
The incident of t