A Gentleman from Gascony: A Romance of the Huguenots — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE LAST OF HIS RACE. 9 ever, home of my ancestors, thou shalt receive a garb more worthy of thy dignity.” And he laughed merrily at the conceit. The hopes of youth are hard to smother. Itisonly in the pathway of the old that the wall of despair rises, dark and im- penetrable in its strength. The echoes of the young chevalier’s laughter had scarce died away when round the house, from the weed- grown avenue that led to the stables, hobbled a little, dried-up old man, leading a horse which, with its knock- knees and its thin sides through which the ribs showed plainly, was aimost as sorry a looking beast as the far- famed Rosinante itself. | “Ah! woe the day!” quavered the old man, as he caught sight of his master. ‘‘Why do you desert the old place? I shall never see you again.” “ Nonsense, my good Francois,” cried the young man cheerily, leaping down the stepsthreeatatime. “Keep up a brave heart, old fellow. You never whimpered like this, when my father—Heaven rest his soul—and I were off to the wars in Flanders.” The old man shook his head dolefully. “That was different! That was different! There is less danger on the battle-field than in that terrible city of Paris. Itisadragon with open jaws ready to devour all that is best in France. I know it! I know it! And,” sinking his voice as if fearful of being overheard, “they hate the Huguenots there.” . “Nay, nay, not so. ‘Times change and we change in them,’ as I learned in my classics. With Harry of Navarre in the Louvre and the husband of the king’s. sister, a Huguenot is as safe in Paris as he is in Gas- cony, aye in Béarn itself. Indeed, my good Francois, I am not romancing,” he added, as the old man refused GEOmichboo S (© A