who shall be nameless
hath run higher risk and gained greater favour than any desperado in the
train of desperate Charles of Burgundy. And if it please his Majesty to
remain behind, and in the background, while such things are doing, he
hath the more leisure of spirit to admire, and the more liberality of
hand to reward the adventurers, whose dangers, perhaps, and whose feats
of arms, he can better judge of than if he had personally shared them.
Oh, 't is a sagacious and most politic monarch!"

His nephew paused, and then said, in a low but impressive tone of voice,
"the good Father Peter used often to teach me there might be much danger
in deeds by which little glory was acquired. I need not say to you, fair
uncle, that I do in course suppose that these secret commissions must
needs be honourable."

"For whom or for what take you me, fair nephew," said Balafre, somewhat
sternly; "I have not been trained, indeed, in the cloister, neither can
I write or read. But I am your mother's brother; I am a loyal Lesly.
Think you that I am like to recommend to you anything unworthy? The best
knight in France, Du Guesclin himself, if he were alive again, might be
proud to number my deeds among his achievements."

"I cannot doubt your warranty, fair uncle," said the youth; "you are the
only adviser my mishap has left me. But is it true, as fame says, that
this King keeps a meagre Court here at his Castle of Plessis? No repair
of nobles or courtiers, none of his grand feudatories in attendance,
none of the high officers of the crown; half solitary sports, shared
only with the menials of his household; secret councils, to which only
low and obscure men are invited; rank and nobility depressed, and men
raised from the lowest origin to the kingly favour--all this seems
unregulated, resembles not the manners of his father, the noble
Charles, who tore from the fangs of the English lion this more than half
conquered kingdom of France."

"You speak like a giddy child," said Le Balafre, "and even as a child,
you harp over the same notes on a new string. Look you: if the King
employs Oliver Dain, his barber, to do what Oliver can do better than
any peer of them all, is not the kingdom the gainer? If he bids his
stout Provost Marshal, Tristan, arrest such or such a seditious burgher,
take off such or such a turbulent noble, the deed is done, and no more
of it; when, were the commission given to a duke or peer of France, he
might perchance