When I came to Verdun, some days after, M. the Marshal de Saint Andre got horses for me and for my man, and for the Italian captain, who spoke excellent German, Spanish, and Walloon, beside his own mother-tongue.  When we were within eight or ten leagues of Metz, we began to go by night only; and when we came near the enemy’s camp I saw, more than a league and a half off, fires lighted all round the town, as if the whole earth were burning; and I believed we could never pass through these fires without being discovered, and therefore hanged and strangled, or cut in pieces, or made to pay a great ransom.  To speak truth, I could well and gladly have wished myself back in Paris, for the great danger that I foresaw.  God guided our business so well, that we entered into the town at midnight, thanks to a signal the captain had with another captain of the company of M. de Guise; to whom I went, and found him in bed, and he received me with high favour, being right glad at my coming.

I gave him my message as the King had commanded me, and told him I had a little letter for him, and the next day I would not fail to deliver it.  Then he ordered me a good lodging, and that I should be well treated, and said I must not fail next morning to be upon the breach, where I should find all the princes and seigneurs, and many captains.  Which I did, and they received me with great joy, and did me the honour to embrace me, and tell me I was welcome; adding they would no more be afraid of dying, if they should happen to be wounded.

M. le Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon was the first who entertained me, and inquired what they were saying at the Court concerning the town of Metz.  I told him all that I chose to tell.  Forthwith he begged me to go and see one of his gentlemen named M. de Magnane, now Chevalier of the Order of the King, and Lieutenant of His Majesty’s Guards, who had his leg broken by a cannon-shot.  I found him in bed, his leg bent and crooked, without any dressing on it, because a gentleman promised to cure him, having his name and his girdle, with certain words (and the poor patient was weeping and crying out with pain, not sleeping day or night for four days past).  Then I laughed at such cheating and false promises; and I reduced and dressed his leg so skilfully that he was without pain, and slept all the night, and afterward, thanks be to God, he was healed, and is still living now, in the King’s service.  The Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon sent me a cask of wine, bigger than a pipe of Anjou, to my lodging, and told me when it was drunk, he would send me another; that was how he treated me, most generously.