BAY ARD.
SOMETIMES we can hardly help thinking that Bayard was born a little after his time. He would have been more in place a century, even two centuries, before the days to which he actually belonged. The minds of men had begun to move, but he was not even faintly touched by the movement. It is almost a surprise to find that he was born eight years after Erasmus, and that when he died, in 1523, Luther had defied Kaiser and Pope. He did not trouble himself about such things. The spear, blunted for the tilt yard and sharpened for the battle, was all the world to him. As for another world, he left that to his confessor. But this may seem out of place. Mr. Hare has a fine story to tell, and he tells it well. Pierre Terrail came of a family which, says his biographer, " did not rank amongst the great and wealthy nobles of the land." Wealthy it was not, but it ranked itself with the best, with the "scarlet nobility," as distinguished from the parvenus whom Louis XI. so plentifully ennobled. He was one of eight, and it is characteristic of the time that four of them were provided for in "religion." Pierre, the second son, chose the profession of arms. He had an excel- lent start in the household of the Duke of Savoy. Six months later the Duke transferred him to the King, Charles VIII. At seventeen he was a squire, at twenty a knight. Then came his first active service, for the distinctions of his early years
* Peter and Wendy. By J. 3f. Barrie. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
F55. net.) eta Co. Ds. net.]
were won in the tournament. He accompanied King Charles in the Italian expedition of the year 1494. For a time all went well, but when the tide turned Bayard showed what be was worth. At Fornovo, where Charles won a victory of a sort, he covered himself with glory. Then follows a story of brilliant achievement, of which we happily possess a detailed account from the pen of a humble friend, who was content to be known to posterity as the loyal servitor. These with other records Mr. Hare has utilized with excellent results ; be has had, too, good help from Mr. Herbert Cole's illustrations. On one point we venture to differ. The commonly accepted story is that as Bayard lay dying on the battlefield of Belgrasso the Constable de Bourbon, who was in command of the Spanish army, paid him a visit and expressed his sorrow. Bayard reproached him with his desertion of the King and exhorted him to return to his allegiance. The Constable endeavoured to justify himself—he had been treated very badly—but took no offence. Mr. Hare pronounces this story to be "most improbable," because the two had been intimate friends. Surely if the two did indeed meet, the knight " without fear and without reproach " could have used no other language.
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