guest with two servants must have been a rarity in
such a place--and the listless way in which they set about attending to
my wants. Keenly remembering that not long before this my enemies had
striven to prejudice me in the King's eyes by alleging that, though I
filled his coffers, I was grinding the poor into the dust--and even, by
my exactions, provoking a rebellion I was in no mood to look with an
indulgent eye on those who furnished such calumnies with a show of
reason. But it has never been my wont to act hastily; and while I stood
in the middle of the kitchen, debating whether I should order the
servants to fling the fellow out, and bid him appear before me at
Villebon, or should instead have him brought up there and then, the
man's coarse voice, which had never ceased to growl and snarl above us,
rose on a sudden still louder. Something fell on the floor over our
heads and rolled across it; and immediately a young girl, barefoot and
short-skirted, scrambled hurriedly and blindly down the ladder and
landed among us.

She was sobbing, and a little blood was flowing from a cut in her lip;
and she trembled all over. At sight of the blood and her tears the
woman seemed to be transported. Snatching up a saucepan, she sprang
towards the ladder with a gesture of rage, and in a moment would have
ascended if her husband had not followed and dragged her back. The
girl also, as soon as she could speak, added her entreaties to his,
while Maignan and La Trape looked sharply at me, as if they expected a
signal.

All this while, the bully above continued his maledictions. "Send that
slut back to me!" he roared. "Do you think that I am going to be left
alone in this hole? Send her back, or--" and he added half-a-dozen
oaths of a kind to make an honest man's blood boil. In the midst of
this, however, and while the woman was still contending with her
husband, he suddenly stopped and shrieked in anguish, crying out for
the salt-bath.

But the woman, whom her husband had only half-pacified, shook her fist
at the ceiling with a laugh of defiance. "Shriek; ay, you may shriek,
you wretch!" she cried. "You must be waited on by my girl, must
you--no older face will do for you--and you beat her? Your horses must
eat corn, must they, while we eat grass? And we buy salt for you, and
wheaten bread for you, and are beggars for you! For you, you thieving
wretch, who tax the poor and let the rich go free; who--"

"Silence, wo