me with emotion, which, strongly in conflict with his fears
as it was, touched me not a little. 'But morbleu! M. de Marsac,' he
said, 'you will take the plague and die.'

'If God wills,' I answered, very lugubriously I confess, for pale looks
in one commonly so fearless could not but depress me. 'But if not, I
shall escape. Any way, my friend,' I continued, 'I owe you a quittance.
Simon Fleix has an inkhorn and paper. Bid him bring them to this stone
and leave them, and I will write that Maignan, the equerry of the Baron
de Rosny, served me to the end as a brave soldier and an honest friend.
'What, MON AMI?' I continued, for I saw that he was overcome by this,
which was, indeed, a happy thought of mine. 'Why not? It is true, and
will acquit you with the Baron. Do it, and go. Advise M. d'Agen, and be
to him what you have been to me.'

He swore two or three great oaths, such as men of his kind use to hide
an excess of feeling, and after some further remonstrance went away to
carry out my orders; leaving me to stand on the brow in a strange kind
of solitude, and watch horses and men withdraw to the wood, until the
whole valley seemed left to me and stillness and the grey evening. For
a time I stood in thought. Then reminding myself, for a fillip to my
spirits, that I had been far more alone when I walked the streets of St.
Jean friendless and threadbare (than I was now), I turned, and swinging
my scabbard against my boots for company, stumbled through the dark,
silent courtyard, and mounted as cheerfully as I could to madame's room.

To detail all that passed during the next five days would be tedious
and in indifferent taste, seeing that I am writing this memoir for the
perusal of men of honour; for though I consider the offices which the
whole can perform for the sick to be worthy of the attention of every
man, however well born, who proposes to see service, they seem to be
more honourable in the doing than the telling. One episode, however,
which marked those days filled me then, as it does now, with the most
lively pleasure; and that was the unexpected devotion displayed by Simon
Fleix, who, coming to me, refused to leave, and showed himself at this
pinch to be possessed of such sterling qualities that I freely forgave
him the deceit he had formerly practised on me. The fits of moody
silence into which he still fell at times and an occasional irascibility
seemed to show that he had not altogether conquered his insane