From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, Stanley John Weyman [read along books txt] 📗

in which even the greatest find it hard to maintain their dignity, and this was one. I looked at Maignan and La Trape, and they at me, and by the light of the lanthorn which the latter held I saw that they were smiling, doubtless at the dilemma in which we had innocently placed ourselves. But I found nothing to laugh at in the position; since the people outside might at any moment leave us where we were to fast until morning; and, after a moment's reflection, I called out to know who the speaker on the other side was.

"I am M. de Fonvelle," he answered.

"Well, M. de Fonvelle," I replied, "I advise you to have a care what you do. I am M. Gringuet's deputy. The other man is an impostor."

He laughed.

"He has no papers," I cried.

"Oh, yes, he has!" he answered, mocking me. "M. Curtin has seen them, my fine fellow, and he is not one to pay money without warrant."

At this several laughed, and a quavering voice chimed in with "Oh, yes, he has papers! I have seen them. Still, in a case—"

"There!" M. Fonvelle cried, drowning the other's words. "Now are you satisfied—you in there?"

But M. Curtin had not done. "He has papers," he piped again in his thin voice.

"Still, M. de Fonvelle, it is well to be cautious, and—"

"Tut, tut! it is all right."

"He has papers, but he has no authority!" I shouted.

"He has seals," Fonvelle answered. "It is all right."

"It is all wrong!" I retorted. "Wrong, I say! Go to your man, and you will find him gone—gone with your money, M. Curtin."

Two or three laughed, but I heard the sound of feet hurrying away, and I guessed that Curtin had retired to satisfy himself. Nevertheless, the moment which followed was an anxious one, since, if my random shot missed, I knew that I should find myself in a worse position than before. But judging—from the fact that the deputy had not confronted us himself—that he was an impostor, to whom Gringuet's illness had suggested the scheme on which I had myself hit, I hoped for the best; and, to be sure, in a moment an outcry arose in the house and quickly spread. Of those at the door, some cried to their fellows to hearken, while others hastened off to see. Yet still a little time elapsed, during which I burned with impatience; and then the crowd came trampling back, all wrangling and speaking at once.

At the door the chattering ceased, and, a hand being laid on the bar, in a moment the door was thrown open, and I walked out with what dignity I might. Outside, the scene which met my eyes might have been, under other circumstances, diverting. Before me stood the landlord of the inn, bowing with a light in each hand, as if the more he bent his backbone the more he must propitiate me; while a fat, middle-aged man at his elbow, whom I took to be Fonvelle, smiled feebly at me with a chapfallen expression. A little aside, Curtin, a shrivelled old fellow, was wringing his hands over his loss; and behind and round these, peeping over their shoulders and staring under their arms, clustered a curious crowd of busybodies, who, between amusement at the joke and awe of the great men, had much ado to control their merriment.

The host began to mutter apologies, but I cut him short. "I will talk to you to-morrow!" I said, in a voice which made him shake in his shoes. "Now give me supper, lights, and a room—and hurry. For you, M. Fonvelle, you are an ass! And for the gentleman there, who has filled the rogue's purse, he will do well another time to pay the King his dues!"

With that I left the two—Fonvelle purple with indignation, and Curtin with eyes and mouth agape and tears stayed—and followed my host to his best room, Maignan and La Trape attending me with very grim faces. Here the landlord would have repeated his apologies, but my thoughts beginning to revert to the purpose which had brought me hither, I affected to be offended, that, by keeping all at a distance, I might the more easily preserve my character.

I succeeded so well that, though half the town, through which the news of my adventure had spread, as fire spreads in tinder, were assembled outside the inn until a late hour, no one was admitted to see me; and when I made my appearance next morning in the market-place and took my seat, with my two attendants, at a table by the corn-measures, this reserve had so far impressed the people that the smiles which greeted me scarcely exceeded those which commonly welcome a tax-collector. Some had paid, and, foreseeing the necessity of paying again, found little that was diverting in the jest. Others thought it no laughing matter to pay once; and a few had come as ill out of the adventure as I had. Under these circumstances, we quickly settled to work, no one entertaining the slightest suspicion; and La Trape, who could accommodate himself to anything, playing the part of clerk, I was presently receiving money and hearing excuses; the minute acquaintance with the routine of the finances, which I had made it my business to acquire, rendering the work easy to me.

We had not been long engaged, however, when Fonvelle put in an appearance, and elbowing the peasants aside, begged to speak with me apart. I rose and stepped back with him two or three paces; on which he winked at me in a very knowing fashion, "I am M. de Fonvelle," he said. And he winked again.

"Ah!" I said.

"My name is not in your list."

"I find it there," I replied, raising a hand to my ear.

"Tut, tut! you do not understand," he muttered. "Has not Gringuet told you?"

"What?" I said, pretending to be a little deaf.

"Has not—"

I shook my head.

"Has not Gringuet told you?" he repeated, reddening with anger; and this time speaking, on compulsion, so loudly that the peasants could hear him.

I answered him in the same tone. "Yes," I said roundly. "He has told me; of course, that every year you give him two hundred livres to omit your name."

He glanced behind him with an oath. "Man, are you mad?" he gasped, his jaw falling. "They will hear you."

"Yes," I said loudly, "I mean them to hear me."

I do not know what he thought of this—perhaps that I was mad—but he staggered back from me, and looked wildly round. Finding everyone laughing, he looked again at me, but still failed to understand; on which, with another oath, he turned on his heel, and forcing his way through the grinning crowd, was out of sight in a moment.

I was about to return to my seat, when a pursy, pale-faced man, with small eyes and a heavy jowl, whom I had before noticed, pushed his way through the line, and came to me. Though his neighbours were all laughing he was sober, and in a moment I understood why.

"I am very deaf," he said in a whisper. "My name, Monsieur, is Philippon. I am a—"

I made a sign to him that I could not hear.

"I am the silk merchant," he continued pretty audibly, but with a suspicious glance behind him. "Probably you have—"

Again I signed to him that I could not hear.

"You have heard of me?"

"From M. Gringuet?" I said very loudly.

"Yes," he answered in a similar tone; for, aware that deaf persons cannot hear their own voices and are seldom able to judge how loudly they are speaking, I had led him to this. "And I suppose that you will do as he did?"

"How?" I asked. "In what way?"

He touched his pocket with a stealthy gesture, unseen by the people behind him.

Again I made a sign as if I could not hear.

"Take the usual little gift?" he said, finding himself compelled to speak.

"I cannot hear a word," I bellowed. By this time the crowd were shaking with laughter.

"Accept the usual gift?" he said, his fat, pale face perspiring, and his little pig's eyes regarding me balefully.

"And let you pay one quarter?" I said.

"Yes," he answered.

But this, and the simplicity with which he said it, drew so loud a roar of laughter from the crowd as penetrated even to his dulled senses. Turning abruptly, as if a bee had stung him, he found the place convulsed with merriment; and perceiving, in an instant, that I had played upon him, though he could not understand how or why, he glared about him a moment, muttered something which I could not catch, and staggered away with the gait of a drunken man.

After this, it was useless to suppose that I could amuse myself with others. The crowd, which had never dreamed of such a tax-collector, and could scarcely believe either eyes or ears, hesitated to come forward even to pay; and I was considering what I should do next, when a commotion in one corner of the square drew my eyes to that quarter. I looked and saw at first only Curtin. Then, the crowd dividing and making way for him, I perceived that he had the real Gringuet with him—Gringuet, who rode through the market with an air of grim majesty, with one foot in a huge slipper and eyes glaring with ill-temper.

Doubtless Curtin, going to him on the chance of hearing something of the rogue who had cheated him, had apprised the tax-collector of the whole matter; for on seeing me in my chair of state, he merely grinned in a vicious way, and cried to the nearest not to let me escape. "We have lost one rogue, but we will hang the other," he said. And while the townsfolk stood dumbfounded round us, he slipped with a groan from his horse, and bade his two servants seize me.

"And do you," he called to the host, "see that you help, my man! You have harboured him, and you shall pay for it if he escapes."

With that he hopped a step nearer; and then, not dreaming of resistance, sank with another groan—for his foot was immensely swollen by the journey—into the chair from which I had risen.

A glance showed me that, if I would not be drawn into an unseemly brawl, I must act; and meeting Maignan's eager eye fixed upon my face, I nodded. In a second he seized the unsuspecting Gringuet by the neck, snatched him up from the chair, and flung him half-a-dozen paces away. "Lie there," he cried, "you insolent rascal! Who told you to sit before your betters?"

The violence of the action, and Maignan's heat, were such that the nearest drew back affrighted; and even Gringuet's servants recoiled, while the market people gasped with astonishment. But I knew that the respite would last a moment only, and I stood forward. "Arrest that man," I said, pointing to the collector, who was grovelling on the ground, nursing his foot and shrieking foul threats at us.

In a second my two men stood over him. "In the King's name," La Trape cried; "let no man interfere."

"Raise him up," I continued, "and set him before me; and Curtin also, and Fonvelle, and Philippon; and Lescaut, the corn-dealer, if he is here."

I spoke boldly, but I felt some misgiving. So mighty, however, is the habit of command, that the crowd, far from resisting, thrust forward the men I named. Still, I could not count on this obedience, and it was with pleasure that I saw at this moment, as I looked over the heads of the crowd, a body of horsemen entering the square. They halted an instant, looking at the unusual concourse; while the townsfolk, interrupted in the middle of the drama, knew not which way to stare. Then Boisrueil, seeing me, and that I was holding some sort of court, spurred his horse through the press, and saluted me.

"Let half-a-dozen of your varlets dismount and guard these men," I said; "and do you, you rogue," I continued, addressing Gringuet, "answer me, and tell me the truth. How much does each of these knaves give you to cheat the King, and your master? Curtin first. How much does he give you?"

"My lord," he answered, pale and shaking, yet with a mutinous gleam in his eyes, "I have a right to know first before whom I stand."

"Enough,"