entleman and a courtier, if I
did not return them when offered, even by a beggar.

"It is a fine horse of yours, Monsieur," said the old Frenchman; "but I
cannot believe--pardon me for saying so--that your slight English steeds
are so well adapted to the purposes of war as our strong chargers,--such
as mine for example."

"It is very possible, Monsieur," said I. "Has the horse you now ride
done service in the field as well as on the road?"

"Ah! _le pauvre petit mignon_,--no!" (_petit_, indeed! this little
darling was seventeen hands high at the very least) "no, Monsieur: it is
but a young creature this; his grandfather served me well!"

"I need not ask you, Monsieur, if you have borne arms: the soldier is
stamped upon you!"

"Sir, you flatter me highly!" said the old gentleman, blushing to the
very tip of his long lean ears, and bowing as low as if I had called
him a Conde. "I have followed the profession of arms for more than fifty
years."

"Fifty years! 'tis a long time."

"A long time," rejoined my companion, "a long time to look back upon
with regret."

"Regret! by Heaven, I should think the remembrance of fifty years'
excitement and glory would be a remembrance of triumph."

The old man turned round on his saddle, and looked at me for some
moments very wistfully. "You are young, Sir," he said, "and at your
years I should have thought with you; but--" (then abruptly changing his
voice, he continued)--"Triumph, did you say? Sir, I have had three sons:
they are dead; they died in battle; I did not weep; I did not shed a
tear, Sir,--not a tear! But I will tell you when I did weep. I came
back, an old man, to the home I had left as a young one. I saw the
country a desert. I saw that the _noblesse_ had become tyrants; the
peasants had become slaves,--such slaves,--savage from despair,--even
when they were most gay, most fearfully gay, from constitution. Sir, I
saw the priest rack and grind, and the seigneur exact and pillage, and
the tax-gatherer squeeze out the little the other oppressors had left;
anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between
one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the
miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen
and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those miseries on the part
of the people; all places sold--even all honours priced--at the court,
which was become a public market, a province of peasants, of l