the afternoon, and always when we were within a short league
of the village of Aubergenville. Though I never had with me less than a
half a score of led horses, I had such an affection for the sorrel that
I preferred to wait until it was shod, rather than accommodate myself to
a nag of less easy paces; and would allow my household to precede me,
while I stayed behind with at most a guard or two, my valet, and a page.

The forge at Aubergenville was kept by a smith of some skill, a cheerful
fellow, whom I rewarded, in view rather of my position than his
services, with a gold piece. His joy at receiving what was to him the
income of three months was great, and never failed to reimburse me; in
addition to which I took some pleasure in unbending, and learning from
this simple peasant and loyal man, what the tax-payers were saying of me
and my reforms--a duty I felt I owed to the King my master.

As a man of breeding, it would ill become me to set down the homely
truths I thus learned. The conversations of the vulgar are little suited
to a nobleman's memoirs. But in this I distinguish between the Duke of
Sully and the King's minister; and it is in the latter capacity that I
relate what passed on these diverting occasions. "Ho! Simon," I would
say, encouraging the poor man as he came bowing before me. "How goes it,
my friend?"

"Badly," he would answer, "very badly until your lordship came this
way."

"And how was that, little man?"

"Ah, it is the roads!" he always replied, shaking his bald head as he
began to set about his business. "The roads since your lordship became
Surveyor-General, are so good, that not one horse in a hundred leaves
its shoe in a slough! And then there are so few highwaymen, that not one
robber's plates do I replace in a twelvemonth! That is where it is."

At this I was highly delighted. "Still, since I began to pass this way
times have not been so bad with you, Simon," I would answer.

Thereto he had one invariable reply. "No, thanks to St. Genevieve and
your Lordship, whom we call in this village the poor man's friend, I
have a fowl in the pot."

This phrase so pleased me, that I repeated it to the king. It tickled
his fancy also, and for many years it was a common remark of that good
and great ruler, that he would fain live to see every peasant with a
fowl in his pot.

"But why," I remember, I once asked this honest fellow--it was on the
last occasion of the sorrel falling lame there--"do