The Man in Black by Stanley J. Weyman

"_I am Jehan de Bault, Seigneur of -- I know not where, and Lord of seventeen lordships in the County of -- -I forget the name, of a most noble and puissant family, possessing the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low. In my veins runs the blood of Roland, and of my forefathers were three marshals of France. I stand here, the_ -- -- "

It was the eve of All Saints, and the famous autumn horse-fair was in progress at Fecamp -- Fecamp on the Normandy coast, the town between the cliffs, which Boisrose, in the year '93, snatched for the Great King by a feat of audacity unparalleled in war. This only by the way, however; and that a worthy deed may not die. For at the date of this fair of which we write, the last day of October, 1637, stout Captain Boisrose, whom Sully made for his daring Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, had long ceased to ruffle it; the Great King had lain in his grave a score of years or more; and though Sully, duke and peer and marshal, still lived, an aged, formal man, in his chateau of Villebon by Chartres, all France, crouching under the iron hand of the Cardinal, looked other ways.