sidering these visions, and comparing my sleeping apathy with my
daylight reflections, I have been led to wonder at the power of habit;
which alone makes it possible for a man who has seen a dozen stricken
fields, and viewed, scarcely with emotion, the slaughter of a hundred
prisoners, to turn pale at the sight of a coach accident, and walk a
mile rather than see a rogue hang.

I am impelled to this train of thought by an adventure that befell me
in the summer of this year 1605; and which, as it seemed to me in the
happening to be rather an evil dream of old times than a waking episode
of these, may afford the reader some diversion, besides relieving the
necessary tedium of the thousand particulars of finance that render the
five farms a study of the utmost intricacy.

My appointment to represent the King at the Assembly of Chatelherault
had carried me in the month of July into Poitou. Being there, and
desirous of learning for myself whether the arrest of Auvergne had
pacified his country to the extent described by the King's agents, I
determined to take advantage of a vacation of the assembly and venture
as far in that direction as Gueret; though Henry, fearing lest the
malcontents should make an attempt on my person in revenge for the
death of Biron, had strictly charged me not to approach within twenty
leagues of the Limousin.

I had with me for escort at Chatelherault a hundred horse; but, these
seeming to be either too many or too few for the purpose, I took with
me only ten picked men with Colet their captain, five servants heavily
armed, and of my gentlemen Boisrueil and La Font. Parabere, to whom I
opened my mind, consented to be my companion. I gave out that I was
going to spend three days at Preuilly, to examine an estate there which
I thought of buying, that I might have a residence in my government;
and, having amused the curious with this statement, I got away at
daybreak, and by an hour before noon was at Touron, where I stayed for
dinner. That night we lay at a village, and the next day dined at St.
Marcel. The second afternoon we reached Crozant.

Here I began to observe those signs of neglect and disorder which, at
the close of the war, had been common in all parts of France, but in
the more favoured districts had been erased by a decade of peace.
Briars and thorns choked the roads, which ran through morasses, between
fields which the husbandman had resigned to tares and undergrowth.
Ruined haml