TER I. THE SPORT OF FOOLS.

The death of the Prince of Conde, which occurred in the spring of 1588,
by depriving me of my only patron, reduced me to such straits that the
winter of that year, which saw the King of Navarre come to spend his
Christmas at St. Jean d'Angely, saw also the nadir of my fortunes. I did
not know at this time--I may confess it to-day without shame--wither to
turn for a gold crown or a new scabbard, and neither had nor discerned
any hope of employment. The peace lately patched up at Blois between the
King of France and the League persuaded many of the Huguenots that their
final ruin was at hand; but it could not fill their exhausted treasury
or enable them to put fresh troops into the field.

The death of the Prince had left the King of Navarre without a rival
in the affections of the Huguenots; the Vicomte de Turenne, whose
turbulent; ambition already began to make itself felt, and M. de
Chatillon, ranking next to him. It was my ill-fortune, however, to be
equally unknown to all three leaders, and as the month of December which
saw me thus miserably straitened saw me reach the age of forty, which I
regard, differing in that from many, as the grand climacteric of a
man's life, it will be believed that I had need of all the courage which
religion and a campaigner's life could supply.

I had been compelled some time before to sell all my horses except the
black Sardinian with the white spot on its forehead; and I now found
myself obliged to part also with my valet de chambre and groom, whom I
dismissed on the same day, paying them their wages with the last links
of gold chain left to me. It was not without grief and dismay that I saw
myself thus stripped of the appurtenances of a man of birth, and driven
to groom my own horse under cover of night. But this was not the worst.
My dress, which suffered inevitably from this menial employment, began
in no long time to bear witness to the change in my circumstances; so
that on the day of the King of Navarre's entrance into St. Jean I dared
not face the crowd, always quick to remark the poverty of those above
them, but was fain to keep within doors and wear out my patience in the
garret of the cutler's house in the Rue de la Coutellerie, which was all
the lodging I could now afford.

Pardieu, 'tis a strange world! Strange that time seems to me; more
strange compared with this. My reflections on that day, I remember, were
of the most melancholy. Look at