A Gentleman of France

A Gentleman of France, being the memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac, is by Stanley John Weyman. The contents list chapters headed The Sport of Fools, The King of Navarre, Boot and Saddle and Mademoiselle de la Vire. The narrator gives the King of Navarre as thirty-five years old at this time, with brown hair, a ruddy complexion and a moustache that, on one side at least, was beginning to turn grey.

The narrator says poverty is not so shameful as the shifts to which it drives men, and speaks of the kindness of heart and singular quickness of apprehension which ever distinguished the king, his master. The narrator confesses that while no man ever did less to free himself than he did, his adversary retained his grasp to the end, and writes of Father Antoine’s meshes. Too late, a dozen men spring forward to the king’s assistance, but before they reach him he has himself drawn the knife from the wound and struck the assassin with it on the head.