"The benefit that comes from the money your mother will send us when she reads your letter."
"And while I make this pen," continued his companion, "I shall tell you the story of my letter."
"Yes, indeed," cried Louis; "I should rather have that than the pen—at least, just now."
"That is a bad choice, for the pen is to give you liberty, and the story will not do that. However, there is a lesson in the story, and you shall have it. It was just before one of the battles between Queen Blanche and the Duke of Burgundy. I was a soldier then, in the service of a good knight; and although I was not his squire, but a simple man-at-arms, ready to fight on horse or on foot, or not to fight at all, just as the case might be, still I was a better man than the squire—for he could not write, any more than his master could. So, just before the battle, the knight sent for me, and, said he, 'Jasto, I have heard that you are a wise fellow and can write, and I want you to write me a letter.' He knew I could write, because I had told him so, and had told all my companions so, for this I found I must do, otherwise they would never be aware of it; for, not knowing how to write themselves, how could they comprehend that I knew? 'I want to send a messenger back to my castle,' said my good knight, 'and I want him to carry a straight and fair message, which he can not do if I send it by word of mouth. So you must write what I wish to say in a letter to my seneschal, and the messenger shall carry it.' With that, he showed me a little piece of parchment that he had with him, and a phial of ink and a pen, and he bade me sit down and write what he told me to say. I liked not this haste, which gave me no time for study and preparation, and I told him, with due respect, that I could not write unless I had a table on which to lay my parchment. Whereupon he made a man with a cuirass get down on all-fours before me, so that on this man's steel back I could write as on a table. My master then told me to write how that, knowing the enemy would soon reach the spot where we then lay, and feeling the want of a stronger force, he desired his seneschal to send him five more men, and five horses, with arms and all things needful, and also to send therewith a new casque which he expected from the armorer, and a long sword which hung up in the great hall, and divers other things, of which I wot not now. When I came to write down all this, I found myself sorely troubled, for you must know that to write a letter requires a knowledge of many things. One must know what letters are needed for a word, what order to put them in, and how to make them.