ed along beside me, "who is within?"

"M. Gringuet," he said, with another stealthy gesture.

"Ah!" I said, "I am afraid that I am no wiser."

"The tax-gatherer."

"Oh! And those are his horses?" He nodded.

"Still, I do not see why they are in the corn?"

"I have no hay."

"But there is grass."

"Ay," the inn-keeper answered bitterly.

"And he said that I might eat it. It was not good enough for his
horses. They must have hay or corn; and if I had none, so much the
worse for me."

Full of indignation, I made in my mind a note of M. Gringuet's name;
but at the moment I said no more, and we proceeded to the house, the
exterior of which, though meagre, and even miserable, gave me an
impression of neatness. From the inside, however, a hoarse, continuous
noise was issuing, which resolved itself as we crossed the threshold
into a man's voice. The speaker was out of sight, in an upper room to
which a ladder gave access, but his oaths, complaints, and imprecations
almost shook the house. A middle-aged woman, scantily dressed, was
busy on the hearth; but perhaps that which, next to the perpetual
scolding that was going on above, most took my attention was a great
lump of salt that stood on the table at the woman's elbow, and seemed
to be evidence of greater luxury--for the GABELLE had not at that time
been reduced--than I could easily associate with the place.

The roaring and blustering continuing upstairs, I stood a moment in
sheer astonishment. "Is that M. Gringuet?" I said at last.

The inn-keeper nodded sullenly, while his wife stared at me. "But what;
is the matter with him?" I said.

"The gout. But for that he would have been gone these two days to
collect at Le Mesnil."

"Ah!" I answered, beginning to understand. "And the salt is for a
bath for his feet, is it?"

The woman nodded.

"Well," I said, as Maignan came in with my saddlebags and laid them on
the floor, "he will swear still louder when he gets the bill, I should
think."

"Bill?" the housewife answered bitterly, looking up again from her
pots. "A tax-gatherer's bill? Go to the dead man and ask for the
price of his coffin; or to the babe for a nurse-fee! You will get paid
as soon. A tax-gatherer's bill? Be thankful if he does not take the
dish with the sop!"

She spoke plainly; yet I found a clearer proof of the slavery in which
the man held them in the perfect indifference with which they regarded
my arrival--though a