A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac, - [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .txt] 📗

He was so comically and yet so seriously angry, and looked so closely at me as he spoke, that I hastened to say I agreed with him perfectly.

‘Yet you eat cheese, sir!’ he retorted irritably.

I saw that, not withstanding the simplicity of his dress, he was a gentleman, and so, forbearing to take offence, I told him plainly that my purse being light I travelled rather as I could than as I would.

‘Is it so?’ he answered hastily. ‘Had I known that, I would have joined you in the cheese! After all, I would rather fast with a gentleman, than feast with a churl. But it is too late now. Seeing you mix the fodder, I thought your pockets were full.’

‘The nag is tired, and has done its best,’ I answered.

He looked at me curiously, and as though he would say more. But the landlord returning at that moment, he turned to him instead.

‘Well!’ he said briskly. ‘Is it all right?’

‘I am sorry, your honour,’ the man answered, reluctantly, and with a very downcast air, ‘but the gentlemen beg to be excused.’

‘Zounds!’ cried my companion roundly. ‘They do, do they?’

‘They say they have no more, sir,’ the landlord continued, faltering, ‘than enough for themselves and a little dog they have with them.’

A shout of laughter which issued at that moment from the other room seemed to show that the quartette were making merry over my companion’s request. I saw his cheek redden, and looked for an explosion of anger on his part; but instead he stood a moment in thought in the middle of the floor, and then, much to the innkeeper’s relief, pushed a stool towards me, and called for a bottle of the best wine. He pleasantly begged leave to eat a little of my cheese, which he said looked better than the Lisieux, and, filling my glass with wine, fell to as merrily as if he had never heard of the party in the other room.

I was more than a little surprised, I remember; for I had taken him to be a passionate man, and not one to sit down under an affront. Still I said nothing, and we conversed very well together. I noticed, however, that he stopped speaking more than once, as though to listen; but conceiving that he was merely reverting to the party in the other room, who grew each moment more uproarious, I said nothing, and was completely taken by surprise when he rose on a sudden, and, going to the open window, leaned out, shading his eyes with his hand.

‘What is it?’ I said, preparing to follow him.

He answered by a quiet chuckle. ‘You shall see,’ he added the next instant.

I rose, and going to the window looked out over his shoulder. Three men were approaching the inn on horseback. The first, a great burly, dark-complexioned man with fierce black eyes and a feathered cap, had pistols in his holsters and a short sword by his side. The other two, with the air of servants, were stout fellows, wearing green doublets and leather breeches. All three rode good horses, while a footman led two hounds after them in a leash. On seeing us they cantered forward, the leader waving his bonnet.

‘Halt, there!’ cried my companion, lifting up his voice when they were within a stone’s throw of us. ‘Maignan!’

‘My lord?’ answered he of the feather, pulling up on the instant.

‘You will find six horses in the shed there,’ the stranger cried in a voice of command. ‘Turn out the four to the left as you go in. Give each a cut, and send it about its business!’

The man wheeled his horse before the words were well uttered, and crying obsequiously ‘that it was done,’ flung his reins to one of the other riders and disappeared in the shed, as if the order given him were the most commonplace one in the world.

The party in the other room, however, by whom all could be heard, were not slow to take the alarm. They broke into a shout of remonstrance, and one of their number, leaping from the window, asked with a very fierce air what the devil we meant. The others thrust out their faces, swollen and flushed with the wine they had drunk, and with many oaths backed up his question. Not feeling myself called upon to interfere, I prepared to see something diverting.

My companion, whose coolness surprised me, had all the air of being as little concerned as myself. He even persisted for a time in ignoring the angry lawyer, and, turning a deaf ear to all the threats and abuse with which the others assailed him, continued to look calmly at the prospect. Seeing this, and that nothing could move him, the man who had jumped through the window, and who seemed the most enterprising of the party, left us at last and ran towards the stalls. The aspect of the two serving-men, however, who rode up grinning, and made as if they would ride him down, determined him to return; which he did, pale with fury, as the last of the four horses clattered out, and after a puzzled look round trotted off at its leisure into the forest.

On this, the man grew more violent, as I have remarked frightened men do; so that at last the stranger condescended to notice him.

‘My good sir,’ he said coolly, looking at him through the window as if he had not seen him before, ‘you annoy me. What is the matter?’

The fellow retorted with a vast amount of bluster, asking what the devil we meant by turning out his horses.

‘Only to give you and the gentlemen with you a little exercise,’ my companion answered, with grim humour, and in a severe tone strange in one so young—‘than which nothing is more wholesome after a full meal. That, and a lesson in good manners. Maignan,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘if this person has anything more to say, answer him. He is nearer your degree than mine.’

And leaving the man to slink away like a whipped dog—for the mean are ever the first to cringe—my friend turned from the window. Meeting my eyes as he went back to his seat, he laughed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think?’

‘That the ass in the lion’s skin is very well till it meets the lion,’ I answered.

He laughed again, and seemed pleased, as I doubt not he was. ‘Pooh, pooh!’ he said. ‘It passed the time, and I think I am quits with my gentlemen now. But I must be riding. Possibly our roads may lie for a while in the same direction, sir?’ And he looked at me irresolutely.

I answered cautiously that I was going to the town of Rosny.

‘You are not from Paris?’ he continued, still looking at me.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I am from the south.’

‘From Blois, perhaps?’

I nodded.