om the
minds of all.

Now in the room which was then the King's Chamber at Montauban, is a
window, at a great height from the ground, a very deep ravine, which is
one of the main defences of the city, lying below it. In the adjoining
ante-chamber is a similar window, and between the two is a projecting
buttress, and outside the sill of each is a stone ledge a foot wide,
which runs round the buttress. I do not know who first thought of it,
but one day when the King was absent and we pages were lounging in the
room--which was against the rules, since we should have been in the
ante-chamber--some one challenged Antoine to walk on the ledge round the
buttress, going out by the one window and returning by the other. I have
said that the ledge was but a foot wide, the depth below infinite. It
turned me sick only to look down and see the hawks hang and circle in
the gulf. Nevertheless, before any could speak, Antoine was outside the
casement poising himself on the airy ledge; a moment, and with his face
turned inwards to the wall, his slight figure outlined against the sky,
he began to edge his way round the buttress.

I called to him to come back; I expected each moment to see him reel and
fall; the others, too, stood staring with uneasy faces; for they had not
thought that he would do it. But he did not heed; an instant, and he
vanished round the buttress, and still we stood, and no one moved; no
one moved, until with a shout he showed himself at the other window, and
sprang down into the ante-chamber. His eyes were bright with the triumph
of it; his hair waved back from his brow as if the breeze from the gulf
still stirred it. He cried to me to do the feat in my turn, he pointed
his finger at me, dared me, and before them all he called me "Coward!
Coward!"

But I am not ashamed to confess a weakness I share with many men of
undoubted courage--I could never face a great height; and though I
burned with wrath and shame, and raged under his taunts, though I could
have confronted any other form of death, at his instigation, or I
thought I could, though I even went so far as to leap on the seat within
the window and stand--and stand irresolute--I stopped there. My head
turned, my skin crept. I could not do it. The victory was with Antoine;
he whom I had thrashed for some impertinence only the night before, now
held me up to scorn and drove me from the room with jeers and laughter.

None of the others had greater courage; non