There he developed a great love for everything connected with the military; he spent all his free time watching the soldiers at their drill, and soon became intimate with some of them, amongst others with a fencing-master who gave him lessons, and a dragoon who taught him to ride.

On a certain Sunday, as he was taking a walk with his sweetheart on his arm, the young girl was insulted by a dragoon of the Marquis de Florae’s regiment.  Jean boxed the dragoon’s ears, who drew his sword.  Cavalier seized a sword from one of the bystanders, but the combatants were prevented from fighting by Jean’s friends.  Hearing of the quarrel, an officer hurried up:  it was the Marquis de Florae himself, captain of the regiment which bore his name; but when he arrived on the scene he found, not the arrogant peasant who had dared to attack a soldier of the king, but only the young girl, who had fainted, the townspeople having persuaded her lover to decamp.

The young girl was so beautiful that she was commonly called la belle Isabeau, and the Marquis de Florac, instead of pursuing Jean Cavalier, occupied himself in reviving Isabeau.

As it was, however, a serious affair, and as the entire regiment had sworn Cavalier’s death, his friends advised him to leave the country for a time.  La belle Isabeau, trembling for the safety of her lover, joined her entreaties to those of his friends, and Jean Cavalier yielded.  The young girl promised him inviolable fidelity, and he, relying on this promise, went to Geneva.

There he made the acquaintance of a Protestant gentleman called Du Serre, who having glass-works at the Mas Arritas, quite near the farm of St. Andeol, had undertaken several times, at the request of Jean’s father, Jerome, to convey money to Jean; for Du Serre went very often to Geneva, professedly on business affairs, but really in the interests of the Reformed faith.  Between the outlaw and the apostle union was natural.  Du Serre found in Cavalier a young man of robust nature, active imagination, and irreproachable courage; he confided to him his hopes of converting all Languedoc and Vivarais.  Cavalier felt himself drawn back there by many ties, especially by patriotism and love.  He crossed the frontier once more, disguised as a servant, in the suite of a Protestant gentleman; he arrived one night at Anduze, and immediately directed his steps to the house of Isabeau.

He was just about to knock, although it was one o’clock in the morning, when the door was opened from within, and a handsome young man came out, who took tender leave of a woman on the threshold.  The handsome young man was the Marquis de Florac; the woman was Isabeau.  The promised wife of the peasant had become the mistress of the noble.

Our hero was not the man to suffer such an outrage quietly.  He walked straight up to the marquis and stood right in his way.  The marquis tried to push him aside with his elbow, but Jean Cavalier, letting fall the cloak in which he was wrapped, drew his sword.  The marquis was brave, and did not stop to inquire if he who attacked him was his equal or not.  Sword answered sword, the blades crossed, and at the end of a few instants the marquis fell, Jean’s sword piercing his chest.