tor's own, and I tell you if
I don't get my suit that I was confirmed in, I'll go to the gentlemen
of the head-chopping company and tell them you've broken out of prison,
which they certainly won't like. For by rights all the aristocrats ought
to go to the "Gartine," or whatever you call it, so that we can have
"egalite" and liberty, and we poor fellows can amuse ourselves instead
of having all the good times used up by the great gentlemen!' Then he
looked at me as if he would like to kill me, but he couldn't do that,
so he tried to talk me round with promises. Dear me! what didn't the man
promise me! A bag full of money, and a pig every year, and every year a
black suit, if I would only go quietly home with him. And he put on my
finger on the spot a ring with a red stone that I had always fancied,
so I went along quietly with him to his apartment that I had the key of.
The Baron slept in my attic room, and I had to lie on the sofa in his
best room to look as if I was trying to play the gentleman. The next day
the Baron went out twice in a blue blouse with a cap on his head, and
the second morning we both went on foot out of the city, in clothes that
I wouldn't have liked to touch with a pair of tongs!"

Mahlmann stopped and rubbed his left knee. "What rheumatism I do have!
And in the month of July! Well, well, it's always the way when you begin
to get old; I suppose I must be about ninety. My grandfather's aunt,
though, was more than a hundred and only died then from eating too much
at a pig-killing!" He sighed and nodded. "We've all got to be put under
ground some day, but it's queer just the same what a difference there is
about dying. I'm old now, and that time when I went through Paris in
the early morning with a rag-bag on my back, and my Baron with just such
another one, was the first time in my life that I ever thought of death,
and it isn't a thought for a boy. It was because the carts were passing
us with the aristocrats who were going to have their heads chopped off.
I'd seen those old carts often enough and naturally thought nothing of
it, because it was a good thing that the fine Monsieurs and Madames were
got rid off; but this time it startled me, for the little Mamsell was in
one of the ramshackle old wagons too. And the strangest of all was she
still had on my confirmation suit that made her look like a pretty boy.
She had folded her hands and looked as if she was going to communion.
There weren't many pe