s. Then, after a moment's silence, he said:

"Will you kindly tell me, sir, how I can assist you in this important
work?"

"You can direct my researches, sir. As you have compiled the history of
the department, none of the important event which have occurred in its
capital can be unknown to you."

"Truly, sir, I believe that in this respect I am tolerably well
informed."

"Then, sir, in the first place, your department was the centre of the
operations of the Company of Jehu."

"Sir, I have heard speak of the Companions of Jesus," replied the
magistrate with his jeering smile.

"The Jesuits, you mean? That is not what I am seeking, sir."

"Nor is it of them that I am speaking. I refer to the stage robbers who
infested the highroads from 1797 to 1800."

"Then, sir, permit me to tell you they are precisely the ones I have
come to Bourg about, and that they were called the Companions of Jehu,
and not the Companions of Jesus."

"What is the meaning of this title 'Companions of Jehu'? I like to get
at the bottom of everything."

"So do I, sir; that is why I did not wish to confound these highwaymen
with the Apostles."

"Truly, that would not have been very orthodox."

"But it is what you would have done, nevertheless, sir, if I, a poet,
had not come here expressly to correct the mistake you, as historian,
have made."

"I await your explanation, sir," resumed the magistrate, pursing his
lips.

"It is short and simple. Elisha consecrated Jehu, King of Israel,
on condition that he exterminate the house of Ahab; Elisha was Louis
XVIII.; Jehu was Cadoudal; the house of Ahab, the Revolution. That is
why these pillagers of diligences, who filched the government money to
support the war in the Vendee, were called the Companions of Jehu."

"Sir, I am happy to learn something at my age."

"Oh, sir! One can always learn, at all times and at all ages; during
life one learns man; in death one learns God."

"But, after all," my interlocutor said to me with a gesture of
impatience, "may I know in what I can assist you?"

"Thus, sir. Four of these young men, leaders of the Companions of Jehu,
were executed at Bourg, on the Place du Bastion."

"In the first place, sir, in Bourg executions do not take place at the
Bastion; they execute on the Fair grounds."

"Now, sir--these last fifteen or twenty years, it is true--since Peytel.
But before, especially during the Revolution, they executed on the Place
du Bastion."