"I daresay the young fellow took service with the marshal to escape from home, and is in hiding at Tiffauges, or mayhap Machecoul itself.

Or he may well have been listening at some lattice of the Hotel de Pornic itself to the idiot clamour of his mother and of the ignorant rabble of Paris!" "Your master loves the society of the young ?" queried Laurence, mending carefully a string of his viol and keeping the end of the catgut in his mouth as he spoke.
"He doats on all young people," answered Gilles de Sille, eagerly, the flicker of a smile running about his mouth like wild-fire over a swamp.
"Why, when a youth of parts once takes service with my master, he never leaves it for any other, not even the King's!" Which in its way was a true enough statement.
"Well," quoth Master Laurence, when he had tied his string and finished cocking his viol and twingle-twangling it to his satisfaction, "you speak well.

And I am not sure but what I may think of it.

I am tired both of working for my father without pay, and of singing psalms in a monastery to please my lord Abbot.

Moreover, in this city of Paris I have to tell every jack with a halbert that I am not the son of the King of England, and then after all as like as not he marches me to the bilboes!" "Of what nativity are you ?" asked de Sille.
"Och, I'm all of a rank Irelander, and my name is Laurence O'Halloran, at your service," quoth the rogue, without a blush.