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Then he bade them adieu by touching their hands, after the Italian fashion, “and they fell upon their knees, weeping so bitterly that it seemed as if they were to be led out to their deaths.”

The dinner hour came and passed. When it was over the knight quickly left the table and called for his horses, being eager to be gone for fear the two armies might come to battle in his absence. As he left his chamber to seek his horse, the two fair daughters of the house came down to bid him a final farewell and to make him presents which they had worked for him during his illness.

One gave him a pair of pretty and delicate bracelets, made of gold and silver thread, worked with marvellous neatness. The other presented him a handsome purse of crimson satin very cleverly ornamented with the needle. The knight received these graceful gifts with warm thanks, saying that presents which came from hands so fair were more to him than a hundred-fold their value in gold. To do them the more honor, he put the bracelets on his wrists and the purse in his sleeve, and assured them that, as long as they lasted, he would wear them for love of the givers.

Then, mounting, the good knight rode away, leaving more tears of joy and heartfelt gratitude behind him than can be said of few soldiers since the world began. It was not for fame he had wrought, or of fame he had thought, but he won high fame by his generous behavior, for his treatment of his Brescian hosts is still quoted as the rarest deed in his chaplet of good actions.

The two archers who had stayed with Bayard failed not to receive the promised reward. Gaston de Foix, the Duke of Nemours, sent the knight a number of presents, among them five hundred crowns, and these he divided between the archers whom he had debarred from their share of the spoil.

It will suffice to say, in conclusion, that he reached the army in time to take part in the battle that followed, and to add therein to his fame as a “good knight without fear.”