The hunchback answered him, roughly: "Wine, good wine. If you bring me
sour runnings I'll break your head."
The landlord bowed with a dipping upward projection of apologetic hands.
"Your honor shall have my best."
The landlord went back into the Inn, and the hunchback sprawled at his
ease, tilting back his chair and resting his lean, black legs on the
table. He sat thus wise for some little time, blinking under the shadow
of his large, black hat at the pleasant sunlight and the pleasant
grasses about him with something of the sour air of one to whom such
pleasant things meant little. But presently his careless eyes, that might
almost have seemed to be asleep, so much were the lids lowered, suddenly
grew alert again. A man appeared on the bridge--a lank, lean,
yellow-skinned man, with a face that seemed carved out of old ivory, with
furtive eyes and a fawning mouth. The new-comer was gorgeously,
over-gorgeously, dressed, and his every movement affected the manners of
a grand seigneur. He carried a tall cane with a jewelled knob, on which
his left hand rested affectionately, as if it pleased him, even in this
form, to handle and control costly things. Precious laces extravagantly
lapped his unattractive hands. A sword with a jewelled hilt hung from his
side. The moment the new-comer saw the hunchback he hastened towards him,
but the hunchback, for his part, for all his plain habit, showed no
deference to the splendidly dressed gentleman who saluted him. He
remained in his easy, sprawling attitude, his chair still tilted back,
his thin legs still lolling on the table. The magnificent gentleman
addressed him with a certain air of condescension in his voice:
"Good-morning, Æsop. You are punctual. A merit."
Æsop, without rising or showing any deference in his manner, answered
with a scarcely veiled note of insolence in his voice: "Good-morning,
Monsieur Peyrolles. You are not punctual. A defect. Sit down."
Peyrolles, apparently somewhat dashed by the coolness of his reception,
obeyed the injunction of the hunchback and seated himself, but he still
forced the show of condescension into his manner and strove to maintain
it in his voice as he continued the conversation. "Though it's--let me
see--why, it's seventeen years since we met--I knew you at once."
Æsop grunted: "Well, I knew you at once, if it comes to that, though the
time was no shorter."
Peyrolles smiled awkwardly. "You haven't changed," he observed.
Æsop's eyes travelled with a careful and contemptuous scrutiny over the
person of his old employer. "You have. You didn't wear quite such fine
clothes when I saw you last, my friend. What luck it is to have a master
who makes a rich marriage!"
As he said these words the landlord emerged from the Inn with a tray in
his hands that bore a bottle and glasses. As he approached, Æsop swung
his legs off the table and resumed the ordinary attitude of a feaster.
The landlord placed the tray on the table, thankfully accepted Æsop's
money, and with many salutations returned to the shelter of the Inn. Æsop
filled two glasses with a shining white wine and pushed one to Peyrolles.
"Drink!" he said, gruffly.