Believing that I have now set down all those particulars of the treaty
with Epernon and the consequent pacification of Brittany in the year
1598 which it will be of advantage to the public to know, that it may
the better distinguish in the future those who have selfishly
impoverished the State from those who, in its behalf, have incurred
obloquy and high looks, I proceed next to the events which followed the
King's return to Paris.
But, first, and by way of sampling the diverting episodes that will
occur from time to time in the most laborious existence, and for the
moment reduce the minister to the level of the man, I am tempted to
narrate an adventure that befell me on my return, between Rennes and
Vitre; when the King having preceded me at speed under the pretext of
urgency, but really that he might avoid the prolix addresses that
awaited him in every town, I found myself no more minded to suffer.
Having sacrificed my ease, therefore, in two of the more important
places, and come within as many stages of Vitre, I determined also on a
holiday. Accordingly, directing my baggage and the numerous escort and
suite that attended me to the full tale of four-score horses--to keep
the high road, I struck myself into a byway, intending to seek
hospitality for the night at a house of M. de Laval's; and on the
second evening to render myself with a good grace to the eulogia and
tedious mercies of the Vitre townsfolk.
I kept with me only La Font and two servants. The day was fine, and
the air brisk; the country open, affording many distant prospects which
the sun rendered cheerful. We rode for some time, therefore, with the
gaiety of schoolboys released from their tasks, and dining at noon in
the lee of one of the great boulders that there dot the plain, took
pleasure in applying to the life of courts every evil epithet that came
to mind. For a little time afterwards we rode as cheerfully; but about
three in the afternoon the sky became overcast, and almost at the same
moment we discovered that we had strayed from the track. The country
in that district resembles the more western parts of Brittany, in
consisting of huge tracts of bog and moorland strewn with rocks and
covered with gorse; which present a cheerful aspect in sunshine, but
are savage and barren to a degree when viewed through sheets of rain or
under a sombre sky.
The position, therefore, was not without its discomforts. I had taken
care to choose a servant who was familiar with the country, but his
knowledge seemed now at fault. However, under his direction we
retraced our steps, but still without regaining the road; and as a
small rain presently began to fall and the day to decline, the
landscape which in the morning had flaunted a wild and rugged beauty,
changed to a brown and dreary waste set here and there with ghost-like
stones. Once astray on this, we found our path beset with sloughs and
morasses; among which we saw every prospect of passing the night, when
La Font espied at a little distance a wind-swept wood that, clothing a
low shoulder of the moor, promised at least a change and shelter. We
made towards it, and discovered not only all that we had expected to
see, but a path and a guide.
The latter was as much surprised to see us as we to see her, for when
we came upon her she was sitting on the bank beside the path weeping
bitterly. On hearing us, however, she sprang up and discovered the
form of a young girl, bare-foot and bareheaded, wearing only a short
ragged frock of homespun. Nevertheless, her face was neither stupid
nor uncomely; and though, at the first alarm, supposing us to be either
robbers or hobgoblins--of which last the people of that country are
peculiarly fearful--she made as if she would escape across the moor,
she stopped as soon as she heard my voice. I asked her gently where we
were.
At first she did not understand, but the servant who had played the
guide so ill, speaking to her in the PATOIS of the country, she
answered that we were near St. Brieuc, a hamlet not far from Bottitort,
and considerably off our road. Asked how far it was to Bottitort, she
answered--between two and three leagues, and an indifferent road.
We could ride the distance in a couple of hours, and there remained
almost as much daylight. But the horses were tired, so, resigning
myself to the prospect of some discomfort, I asked her if there was an
inn at St. Brieuc.
"A poor place for your honours," she answered, staring at us in
innocent wonder, the forgotten tears not dry on her cheeks.
"Never mind; take us to it," I answered.
She turned at the word and tripped on before us. I bade the servant
ask her, as we went, why she had been crying, and learned through him
that she had been to her uncle's two leagues away to borrow money for
her mother; that the uncle would not lend it, and that now they would
be turned out of their house; that her father was lately dead, and that
her mother kept the inn, and owed the money for meal and cider.
"At least, she says that she does not owe it," the man corrected
himself, "for her father paid as usual at Corpus Christi; but after his
death M. Grabot said that he had not paid, and--"
"M. Grabot?" I said. "Who is he?"
"The Mayor of Bottitort."
"The creditor?"
"Yes."
"And how much is owing?" I asked.
"Nothing, she says."
"But how much does he say?"
"Twenty crowns."
Doubtless some will view my conduct on this occasion with surprise; and
wonder why I troubled myself with inquiries so minute upon a matter so
mean. But these do not consider that ministers are the King's eyes;
and that in a State no class is so unimportant that it can be safely
overlooked. Moreover, as the settlement of the finances was one of the
objects of my stay in those parts--and I seldom had the opportunity of
checking the statements made to me by the farmers and lessees of the
taxes, the receivers, gatherers, and, in a word, all the corrupt class
that imparts such views of a province as suit its interests--I was glad
to learn anything that threw light on the real condition of the
country: the more, as I had to receive at Vitre a deputation of the
notables and officials of the district.
Accordingly, I continued to put questions to her until, crossing a
ridge, we came at last within sight of the inn, a lonely house of
stone, standing in the hollow of the moor and sheltered on one side by
a few gnarled trees that took off in a degree from the bleakness of its
aspect. The house was of one story only, with a window on either side
of the door, and no other appeared in sight; but a little smoke rising
from the chimney seemed to promise a better reception than the desolate
landscape and the girl's scanty dress had led us to expect.
As we drew nearer, however, a thing happened so remarkable as to draw
our attention in a moment from all these points, and bring us, gaping,
to a standstill. The shutters of the two windows were suddenly closed
before our eyes with a clap that came sharply on the wind. Then, in a
twinkling, one window flew open again and a man, seemingly naked,
bounded from it, fled with inconceivable rapidity across the front of
the house and vanished through the other window, which opened to
receive him. He had scarcely gained that shelter before a coal-black
figure followed him, leaping out of the one window and in at the other
with the same astonishing swiftness--a swiftness which was so great
that before any of us could utter more than an exclamation, the two
figures appeared again round the corner of the house, in the same
order, but this time with so small an interval that the fugitive barely
saved himself through the window. Once more, while we stared in
stupefaction, they flashed out and in; and this time it seemed to me
that as they vanished the black spectre seized its victim.
When I say that all this time the two figures uttered no sound, that
there was no other living being in sight, and that on every side of the
solitary house the moor, growing each minute more eerie as the day
waned, spread to the horizon, the more superstitious among us may be
pardoned if they gave way to their fears. La Font was the first to
speak.
"MON DIEU!" he cried--while the girl moaned in terror, the Breton
crossed himself, and La Trape looked uncomfortable--"the place is
bewitched!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Who is in the house, girl?"
"Only my mother," she wailed. "Oh, my poor mother!"
I silenced her, scolding them all for fools, and her first; and La
Font, recovering himself, did the same. But this was the year of that
strange appearance of the spectre horseman at Fontainebleau of which so
much has been said; and my servants, when we had approached the house a
little nearer, and it still remained silent and, as it were, dead to
the eye, would go no farther, but stood in sheer terror and permitted
me to go on alone with La Font. I confess that the loneliness of the
house, and the dreary waste that surrounded it (which seemed to exclude
the idea of trickery) were not without their effect on my spirits; and
that as I dismounted and approached the door, I felt a kind of chill
not remarkable under the circumstances.
But the courage of the gentleman differs from that of the vulgar in
that he fears yet goes; and I lifted the latch, and entered boldly.
The scene which met my eyes inside was sufficiently commonplace to
reassure me. At the farther end of a long bare room, draughty,
half-lighted, and having an earthen floor, yet possessing that air of
homeliness which a wood fire never fails to impart, sat a single
traveller; who had drawn his small table under the open chimney, and
there, with his feet almost in the fire, was partaking of a poor meal
of black bread and onions. He was a tall, spare man, with sloping
shoulders and a long sour face, of which, as I entered, he gave me the
full benefit.
I looked round the room, but look as I might I could see no one else,
nor anything that explained what we had witnessed and I accosted the
man civilly, wishing him good evening. He made an answer, but
indistinctly, and, this done, went on with his meal like one who viewed
our arrival with little pleasure; while I, puzzled and astonished by
the ordinary look of things and the stillness of the house, affected to
warm my feet at the logs. At length, espying no signs of disturbance
anywhere, I asked him if he was alone.
"I was, sir," he answered gravely.
I was going on to tell him, though reluctantly, what we had seen
outside, and to question him upon it, when on a sudden, before I could
speak again, he leaned towards me and accosted me with startling
abruptness. "Sir," he said, "I should like to have your opinion of
Louis Eleven."
I stared at him in the most perfect astonishment; and was for a moment
so completely taken aback that I mechanically repeated his words. For
answer, he did so also.
"The Eleventh Louis?" I said.
"Yes," he rejoined, turning his pale visage full upon me. "What is
your opinion of him, sir? He was a man?"
"Well," I said, shrugging my shoulders, "I take that for granted." I
began to think that the traveller was demented.
"And a king?"
"Yes, I suppose so," I answered contemptuously. "I never heard it
doubted."
He leaned towards me, and spoke with the most eager impressiveness. "A
man--and a king!" he said. "Yet neither a manly king, nor a kingly
man! You take me?"
"Yes," I said impatiently. "I see what you mean.
"Neither a kingly man, nor a manly king!" he repeated with solemn
gusto. "You take me clearly, I think?"
I had no stomach for further fooleries, and I was about to answer him
with some sharpness--though I could not for the life of me tell whether
he was mad or an eccentric when a harsh voice shrieked in my ear,
"Bob!" and in a twinkling a red figure appeared bounding and whirling
in the middle of the kitchen; now springing into the air until its head
touched the rafters, now eddying round and round the floor in the
giddiest gyrations. At the first glance, startled by the voice in my
ear, I recoiled; but a second disclosing what it was, and the secret of
our alarm outside, I masked my movement; and when the man brought his
performance to a sudden stop, and falling on one knee in an attitude of
exaggerated respect held out his cap, I was ready for him.
"Why, you knave," I said, "you should be whipped, not rewarded. Who
gave you leave to play pranks on travellers?"
He looked at me with a droll smile on his round merry face, which at
its gravest was a thing to laugh at. "Let him whip who is scared," he
said, with roguish impudence. "Or if there is to be whipping, my lord,
whip Louis XI."
Thus reminded, I turned to the solemn traveller; but my eyes had no
sooner met his than he twisted his visage into so wry a smile--if smile
it could be called--that wherever there was a horse collar he must have
won the prize. To hide my amusement, I asked them what they were.
"Mountebanks?" I said curtly.
"Your lordship has pricked the garter offhand," the merry man answered
cheerfully. "You see before you the renowned Pierre Paladin
VOILA!--and Philibert Le Grand! of the Breton fairs, monsieur."
"But why this foolery--here?" I said.
"We took you for another, monsieur," he answered.
"Whom you intended to frighten?"
"Precisely, your grace."
"Well, you are nice rogues," I said, looking at him.
"So is he," he answered, undaunted.
I left the matter there for a moment, while I summoned La Font and the
servants; whose rage, when, entering a-tiptoe and with some misgiving,
they discovered how they had been deceived, and by whom, was scarcely
to be restrained even by my presence. However, aided by Philibert's
comicalities, I presently secured a truce, and the two strollers
vacating in my honour the table by the fire--though they had not the
slightest notion who I was we were soon on terms. I had taken the
precaution to bring a meal with me, and while La Trape and his
companion unpacked it, and I dried my riding boots, I asked the players
who it was they had meant to frighten.
They were not very willing to tell me, but at length confessed, to my
astonishment, that it was M. Grabot.
"Grabot--Grabot!" I said, striving to recollect where I had heard the
name. "The Mayor of Bottitort?"
The solemn man made an atrocious grimace. Then, "Yes, monsieur, the
Mayor of Bottitort," he said frankly. "A year ago he put Philibert in
the stocks for a riddle; that is his affair. And the woman of this
house has more than once befriended me, and he is for turning her out
for a debt she does not owe; and that is my affair. However, your
lordship's arrival has saved him for this time."
"You expected him here this evening, then?"
"He is coming," he answered, with more than his usual gloom. "He
passed this way this morning, and announced that on his return he
should spend the night here. We found the goodwife all of a tremble
when we arrived. He is a hard man, monsieur," the mountebank continued
bitterly. "She cried after him that she hoped that God would change
his heart, but he only answered that even if St. Brieuc changed his
body--you know the legend, monseigneur, doubtless--he should be here."
"And here he is," the other, who had been looking out of one of the
windows, cried. "I see his lanthorn coming down the hill. And by St.
Brieuc, I have it! I have it," the droll continued, suddenly spinning
round in a wild dance of triumph on the floor, and then as suddenly
stopping and falling into an attitude before us. "Monsieur, if you
will help us, I have the richest jest ever played. Pierre, listen.
You, gentlemen all, listen! We will pretend that he is changed. He is
a pompous man; he thinks the Mayor of Bottitort equal to the Saint
Pere. Well, Pierre shall be M. Grabot, Mayor of Bottitort. You,
monsieur, that we may give him enough of mayors, shall be the Mayor of
Gol, and I will be the Mayor of St. Just. This gentleman shall swear
to us, so shall the servants. For him, he does not exist. Oh, we will
punish him finely."
"But," I said, astounded by the very audacity of the rogue's
proposition, "you do not flatter yourself that you will deceive him?"
"We shall, monsieur, if you will help," he answered confidently. "I
will be warrant for it we shall."
The thing had little of dignity in it, and I wonder now that I
complied; but I have always shared with the King, my master, a taste
for drolleries of the kind suggested; while nothing that I had as yet
heard of this Grabot was of a nature to induce me to spare him. Seeing
that La Font was tickled with the idea, and that the servants were
a-grin, and the more eager to trick others as they had just been
tricked themselves, I was tempted to consent.
After this, the preparations took not a minute. Philibert covered his
fool's clothes with a cloak, and their table was drawn nearer to the
fire, so as, with mine, to take up the whole hearth. La Trape fell
into an attitude behind me; and the Breton, adopting a refinement
suggested at the last moment, was sent out to intercept Grabot before
he entered, and tell him that the inn was full, and that he had better
pass on.
The knave did his business so well that Grabot, being just such a man
as the stroller had described to us, the altercation on the threshold
was of itself the most amusing thing in the world. "Who?" we heard a
loud, coarse voice exclaim. "Who d'ye say are here, man?"
"The Mayor of Bottitort."
"MILLE DIABLES!"
"The Mayor of Bottitort and the Mayors of Gol and St. Just," the
servant repeated as if he noticed nothing amiss.
"That is a lie!" the new comer replied, with a snort of triumph, "and
an impudent one. But you have got the wrong sow by the ear this time."
"Why, man," a third voice, somewhat nasal and rustical, struck in,
"don't you know the Mayor of Bottitort?"
"I should," my Breton answered bluntly, and making, as we guessed, a
stand before them. "For I am his servant, and he is this moment at his
meat."
"The Mayor of Bottitort?"
"Yes."
"M. Grabot?"
"Yes."
"And you are his servant?"
"I have thought so for some time," the Breton answered contemptuously.
The Mayor fairly roared in his indignation. "You--his servant! The
Mayor of Bottitort's?" he cried in a voice of thunder. "I'll tell you
what you are; you are a liar!--a liar, man, that is what you are! Why,
you fool, I am the Mayor of Bottitort myself. Now, do you see how you
have wasted yourself? Out of my way! Jehan, follow me in. I shall
look into this. There is some knavery here, but if Simon Grabot cannot
get to the bottom of it the Mayor of Bottitort will. Follow me, I say.
My servant indeed? Come, come!"
And, still grumbling, he flung open the door, which the Breton had left
ajar, and stalked in upon us, fuming and blowing out his cheeks for all
the world like a bantam cock with its feathers erect. He was a short,
pursy man; with a short nose, a wide face, and small eyes. But had he
been Caesar and Alexander rolled into one, he could not have crossed
the threshold with a more tremendous assumption of dignity. Once
inside, he stood and glared at us, somewhat taken aback, I think, for
the moment by our numbers; but recovering himself almost immediately,
he strutted towards us, and, without uncovering or saluting us, he
asked in a deep voice who was responsible for the man outside.
"I am," the graver mountebank answered, looking at the stranger with a
sober air of surprise. "He is my servant."
"Ah!" the Mayor exclaimed, with a withering glance. "And who, may I
ask, are you?"
"You may ask, certainly," the player answered drily. "But until you
take off your hat I shall not answer."
The Mayor gasped at this rebuff, and turned, if it were possible, a
shade redder; but he uncovered.
"Now I do not mind telling you," Pierre continued, with a mild dignity
admirably assumed, "that I am Simon Grabot, and have the honour to be
Mayor of Bottitort."
"You!"
"Yes, monsieur, I; though perhaps unworthy."
I looked to see an explosion, but the Mayor was too far gone. "Why, you
swindling impostor," he said, with something that was almost admiration
in his tone. "You are the very prince of cheats! The king of
cozeners! But for all that, let me tell you, you have chosen the wrong
ROLE this time. For I--I, sir, am the Mayor of Bottitort, the very man
whose name you have taken!"
Pierre stared at him in composed silence, which his comrade was the
first to break. "Is he mad?" he said in a low voice.
The grave man shook his head.
The Mayor heard and saw; and getting no other answer, began to tremble
between passion and a natural, though ill-defined, misgiving, which the
silent gaze of so large a party--for we all looked at him
compassionately--was well calculated to produce. "Mad?" he cried.
"No, but some one is, Sir," he continued, turning to La Font with a
gesture in which appeal and impatience were curiously blended, "Do you
know this man?"
"M. Grabot? Certainly," he answered, without blushing. "And have
these ten years."
"And you say that he is M. Grabot?" the poor Mayor retorted, his jaw
falling ludicrously.
"Certainly. Who should he be?"
The Mayor looked round him, sudden beads of sweat on his brow. "MON
DIEU!" he cried. "You are all in it. Here, you, do you know this
person?"
La Trape, to whom he addressed himself, shrugged his shoulders. "I
should," he said. "The Mayor is pretty well known about here."
"The Mayor?"
"Ay."
"But I am the Mayor--I," Grabot answered eagerly, tapping himself on
the breast in the most absurd manner. "Don't you know me, my friend?"
"I never saw you before, to my knowledge," the rascal answered
contemptuously; "and I know this country pretty well. I should think
that you have been crossing St. Brieuc's brook, and forgotten to say
your--"
"Hush!" the stout player interposed with some sharpness. "Let him
alone. LE BON DIEU knows that such a thing may happen to the best of
us."
The Mayor clapped his hand to his head. "Sir," he said almost humbly,
addressing the last speaker, "I seem to know your voice. Your name, if
you please?"
"Fracasse," he answered pleasantly. "I am Mayor of Gol."
"You--Fracasse, Mayor of Gol?" Grabot exclaimed between rage and
terror. "But Fracasse is a tall man. I know him as well as I know my
brother."
The pseudo-Fracasse smiled, but did not contradict him.
The Mayor wiped the moisture from his brow. He had all the
characteristics of an obstinate man; but if there is one thing which I
have found in a long career more true than another, it is that no one
can resist the statements of his fellows. So much, I verily believe,
is this the case, that if ten men maintain black to be white, the
eleventh will presently be brought into their opinion. Besides, the
Mayor had a currish side. He looked piteously from one to another of
us, his cheeks seemed to grow in a moment pale and flabby, and he was
on the point of whimpering, when at the last moment he bethought him of
his servant, and turned to him in a spurt of sudden thankfulness.
"Why, Jehan, man, I had forgotten you," he said. "Are these men mad,
or am I?"
But Jehan, a simple rustic, was in a state of ludicrous bewilderment.
"Dol, master, I don't know," he stuttered, rubbing his head.
"But I am myself," the Mayor cried, in a most ridiculous tone of
remonstrance.
"Dol, and I don't know," the man whimpered. "I do believe that there
is a change in you. I never saw you look the like before. And I never
said any PATER either. Holy saints!" the poor fool continued
piteously, "I wish I were at home. And there, for all I know, my wife
has got another man."
He began to blubber at this; which to us was the most ludicrous
thought, so that it was all we could do to restrain our laughter. But
the Mayor saw things in another light. Shaken by our steady
persistence in our story, and astounded by our want of respect, the
defection of his follower utterly cowed him. After staring wildly
about him for a moment, he fairly turned tail, and sat down on an old
box by the door, where with his hands on his knees, he looked out
before him with such an expression of chap-fallen bewilderment as
nearly discovered our plot by throwing us into fits of laughter.
Still he was not persuaded; for, from time to time, he roused himself,
and lifting his head cast suspicious glances at our party. But the two
strollers, who were now in their element, played their parts with so
much craft and delicacy, and with such an infinity of humour besides,
that everything he overheard plunged him deeper in the slough. They
knew something of local affairs, and called one another Mayor very
naturally; and mentioning their wives, let drop other scraps of
information that, catching his ear, made the wretched man every now and
then sit up as if a wasp had stung him. One story in particular which
the false Mayor told--and which, it appeared, was to the knowledge of
all the country round the real Mayor's stock anecdote--had an absurd
effect upon him. He straightened himself, listened as if his life
depended upon it, and when he heard the well-known ending, uttered,
doubtless, in something of his old tone, he collapsed into himself like
a man who had no longer faith in anything.
Presently, however, an effort of common-sense would again disperse the
fog. He would raise his head, his eye grow bright, something of his
old pugnacity would come back to him. He would appear--this more than
once--to be on the point of rising to challenge us. But these
occasions were as skilfully met as they were easily detected; and as
the rogues had invariably some stroke in reserve that in a twinkling
flung him back into his old state of dazed bewilderment, while it
well-nigh killed us with stifled mirth, they only gave ever new point
to the jest.
This, to be brief, was carried on until I retired; and probably the two
strollers would have kept it up longer if the ludicrous doubt whether
he was himself, which they had lodged in the Mayor's mind, had not at
last spurred him to action. An hour before midnight, feeling it rankle
intolerably, I suppose, he sprang up on a sudden, dragged the door
open, darted out with the air of a madman, and in a moment was lost in
the darkness of the moor.
When I rose in the morning, therefore, I found him gone, the strollers
looking glum, and the good-wife and her girl between tears and
reproaches. I could not but feel, on my part, that I had somewhat
stooped in the night's diversion; but before I had time to reflect much
on that an unexpected trait in the strollers' conduct reconciled me to
this odd experience. They proposed to leave when I did; but a little
before the start they came to me, and set before me very ingenuously
that the woman of the house might suffer through our jest; if I would
help her therefore, they would subscribe two crowns so that she might
have a substantial sum to offer on account of her debt. As I took this
to be the greater part of their capital, and judged for other reasons
that the offer was genuine, I received it in the best part, and found
their good-nature no less pleasant than their foolery. I handed over
three crowns for our share, and on that we parted; they set out with
their bundles strapped to their backs, and I waited somewhat
impatiently for La Trape and the Breton to bring round the horses.
Before these appeared, however, La Font, who was at the door, cried out
that the two players were coming hack; and going to the window I saw
with astonishment a whole troop, some mounted and some on foot,
hurrying down the hill after them. For a moment I felt some alarm,
supposing it to be a scheme of Epernon's to seize my person; and I
cursed the imprudence which had led me to expose myself in this
solitary place. But a second glance showing me that the Mayor of
Bottitort was among the foremost, I repented almost as seriously of the
unlucky trifling that had landed me in this foolish plight.
I even debated whether I should mount and, if it were possible, get
clear before they arrived; but the rueful faces of the two players as
they appeared breathless in the doorway, and the liking I had taken for
the rascals, decided me to stand my ground "What is it?" I said.
"The Mayor, monsieur," Philibert answered, while Pierre pursed up his
lips with gloomy gravity. "I fear it will not stop at the stocks this
time," the rogue continued with a grimace.
His comrade muttered something about a rod and a fool's back; but M.
Grabot's entrance cut his witticism short. The Mayor, between shame
and rage, and the gratification of his revenge, was almost bursting,
and the moment he caught sight of us opened fire. "All, M. de Gol; we
have them all!" he cried exultingly. "Now they shall smart for it!
Depend upon it, it is some deep-laid scheme of that party. I have said
so."
But the Mayor of Gol, a stout, big, placid man, looked at us
doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I know these two; they are strolling
mountebanks, honest knaves enough but always in some mischief."
"What, strolling clowns?" M. Grabot rejoined, his face falling.
"Ay, and you may depend upon it it is some joke of theirs," his friend
answered, his eyes twinkling. "I begin to think that you would have
done better if you had waited a little before bringing M. le Comte into
the matter."
"Ah, but there are these two," M. Grabot cried, as he recovered from
the momentary panic into which the other's words had thrown him.
"Depend upon it they are the chief movers. What else but treason could
they mean by asserting that one of them was Mayor of Bottitort? By
denying my title? By setting up other officers than those to whom his
Gracious Majesty has delegated his authority?"
"Umph!" his brother Mayor said, "I don't know these gentlemen."
"No!" his companion cried in triumph. "But I intend to know them; and
to know a good deal about them. Guard the window there," he continued
fussily. "Where is my clerk? Is M. de Laval coming?"
Two or three cried obsequiously that he had crossed the hill; and would
arrive immediately.
Hearing this, and thinking it more becoming not to enter into an
altercation, I kept my seat and the scornful silence I had hitherto
maintained. The two Mayors had brought with them a posse of
busybodies--huissiers, constables, tip-staves, and the like; and these
all gaped upon us as if they saw before them the most notable traitors
of the age. The women of the house wept in a corner, and the strollers
shrugged their shoulders and strove to appear at their ease. But the
only person who felt the indifference which they assumed was La Font;
who, obnoxious to none of the annoyances which I foresaw, could hardly
restrain his mirth at the DENOUEMENT which he anticipated.
Meanwhile the Mayor, foreseeing a very different issue, stood blowing
out his cheeks and fixing us with his little eyes with an expression of
dignity that would have pleased me vastly if I had been free to enjoy
it. But the reflection that Laval's presence, which would cut the knot
of our difficulties, would also place me at the mercy of his wit, did
not enable me to contemplate it with entire indifference.
By-and-by we heard him dismount, and a moment later he came in with a
gentleman and two or three armed servants. He did not at once see me,
but as the crowd made way for him he addressed himself sharply to M.
Grabot. "Well, have you got them?" he said.
"Certainly, M. le Comte."
"Oh! very well. Now for the particulars, then. You must state your
charge quickly, for I have to be in Vitre to-day."
"He alleged that he had been appointed Mayor of Bottitort," Grabot
answered pompously.
"Umph! I don't know?" M. de Laval muttered, looking round with a
frown of discontent. "I hope that you have not brought me hither on a
fool's errand. Which one?"
"That one," the Mayor said, pointing to the solemn man, whose gravity
and depression were now something preternatural.
"Oh!" M. de Laval grumbled. "But that is not all, I suppose. What of
the others?"