e Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and on
the 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with Philip
II. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France. The
Duc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith's "Duke of
Mercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises in
the League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanish
protection. However, fortune was against him and he submitted to
Henry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about for an
opportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to the
Emperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of his
French followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise the
siege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000
men.

Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,
he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving and
fighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the best
market, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked and
hewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for three
or four years. At the end of that time he bethought himself that he
had not delivered his letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusan
for Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained by
illness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On his
recovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment from
the Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his way
as a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.

The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the county
of Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph to
the great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place to
him after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company,
and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good ways
from any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs--less
substantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond--and there he
heroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War,"
read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance and
ring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose food
was thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact his
men kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged in
this ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to be
drawn out