Explore "Bardelys the Magnificent" by Rafael Sabatini on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the occasion of my first visit to Lavedan I had disregarded - or, rather, Fate had contrived that I should disregard - Chatellerault's suggestion that I should go with all the panoply of power - with my followers, my liveries, and my equipages to compose the magnificence all France had come to associate with my name, and thus dazzle by my brilliant lustre the lady I was come to win. As you may remember, I had crept into the chateau like a thief in the night, - wounded, bedraggled, and of miserable aspect, seeking to provoke compassion rather than admiration.
Not so now that I made my second visit. I availed myself of all the splendour to which I owed my title of "Magnificent, " and rode into the courtyard of the Chateau de Lavedan preceded by twenty well-mounted knaves wearing the gorgeous Saint-Pol liveries of scarlet and gold, with the Bardelys escutcheon broidered on the breasts of their doublets - on a field or a bar azure surcharged by three lilies of the field. They were armed with swords and musketoons, and had more the air of a royal bodyguard than of a company of attendant servants.