I could tell you of some, as scaling castles, making prisoners, and the like, where one who shall be nameless hath run higher risk and gained greater favour than any desperado in the train of desperate Charles of Burgundy.

And if it please his Majesty to remain behind, and in the background, while such things are doing, he hath the more leisure of spirit to admire, and the more liberality of hand to reward the adventurers, whose dangers, perhaps, and whose feats of arms, he can better judge of than if he had personally shared them.
Oh, 't is a sagacious and most politic monarch!" His nephew paused, and then said, in a low but impressive tone of voice, "the good Father Peter used often to teach me there might be much danger in deeds by which little glory was acquired.

I need not say to you, fair uncle, that I do in course suppose that these secret commissions must needs be honourable." "For whom or for what take you me, fair nephew," said Balafre, somewhat sternly; "I have not been trained, indeed, in the cloister, neither can I write or read.

But I am your mother's brother; I am a loyal Lesly.
Think you that I am like to recommend to you anything unworthy?
The best knight in France, Du Guesclin himself, if he were alive again, might be proud to number my deeds among his achievements." "I cannot doubt your warranty, fair uncle," said the youth; "you are the only adviser my mishap has left me.

But is it true, as fame says, that this King keeps a meagre Court here at his Castle of Plessis?
No repair of nobles or courtiers, none of his grand feudatories in attendance, none of the high officers of the crown; half solitary sports, shared only with the menials of his household; secret councils, to which only low and obscure men are invited; rank and nobility depressed, and men raised from the lowest origin to the kingly favour--all this seems unregulated, resembles not the manners of his father, the noble Charles, who tore from the fangs of the English lion this more than half conquered kingdom of France." "You speak like a giddy child," said Le Balafre, "and even as a child, you harp over the same notes on a new string.