The Chevalier smiled at Victor.  “We never find constancy where we look for it.  Lad,” he said to Breton, “I can not take you with me.  I am going not as a gentleman but as a common trooper, and they are not permitted to have lackeys.  Take the money; it is all I can do for you.”

Breton stretched a supplicating hand toward the poet.

“Let him go, Paul,” urged Victor.  “Du Puys will make an exception in your case.  Let him go.  My own lad Hector goes to my sister’s, and she will take good care of him.  You can’t leave this lad here, Paul.  Take him along.”

“But your future?” still reluctant to see Victor leave France.

“It is there,” with a nod toward the west.

“The vicomte . . .”

“We have signed a truce till we return to French soil.”

“Well, if you will go,” a secret joy in his heart.  How he loved this poet!

“It is the land of fortune, Paul; it is calling to us.  True, I shall miss the routs, the life at court, the plays and the gaming.  But, horns of Panurge!  I am only twenty-three.  In three years I shall have conquered or have been conquered, and that is something.  Do not dissuade me.  You will talk into the face of the tempest.  Rather make the going a joy for me.  You know that at the bottom of your heart you are glad.”

“Misery loves company; we are all selfish,” replied the Chevalier, “My selfishness cries out for joy, but my sense of honesty tells me not to let you go.  I shall never return to France.  You will not be happy there.”

“I shall be safer; and happiness is a matter of temperament, not of time and place.  You put up a poor defense.  Look! we have been so long together, Paul; eight years, since I was sixteen, and a page of her Majesty’s.  I should not know what to do without you.  We have shared the same tents on the battlefield; I have borrowed your clothes and your money, and you have borrowed my sword, for that is all I have.  Listen to me.  There will be exploits over there, and the echo of them will wander back here to France.  Fame awaits us.  Are we not as brave and inventive as De Champlain, De Montmagny, De Lisle, and a host of others who have made money and name?  Come; take my hand.  Together, Paul, and what may not fortune hold for us!”

There was something irresistible in his pleading; and the Chevalier felt the need of some one on whom to spend his brimming heart of love.  His face showed that he was weighing the matter and viewing it from all points.  Presently the severe lines of his face softened.

“Very well, we shall go together, my poet,” throwing an arm across Victor’s shoulders.  “We shall go together, as we have always gone.  And, after all, what is a name but sounding brass?  ’Tis a man’s arm that makes or unmakes his honesty, not his thrift; his loyalty, rather than his self-interest.  We shall go together.  Come; we’ll sign the major’s papers, and have done with it.”