for the best;
and, to be sure, in a moment an outcry arose in the house and quickly
spread. Of those at the door, some cried to their fellows to hearken,
while others hastened off to see. Yet still a little time elapsed,
during which I burned with impatience; and then the crowd came
trampling back, all wrangling and speaking at once.

At the door the chattering ceased, and, a hand being laid on the bar,
in a moment the door was thrown open, and I walked out with what
dignity I might. Outside, the scene which met my eyes might have been,
under other circumstances, diverting. Before me stood the landlord of
the inn, bowing with a light in each hand, as if the more he bent his
backbone the more he must propitiate me; while a fat, middle-aged man
at his elbow, whom I took to be Fonvelle, smiled feebly at me with a
chapfallen expression. A little aside, Curtin, a shrivelled old
fellow, was wringing his hands over his loss; and behind and round
these, peeping over their shoulders and staring under their arms,
clustered a curious crowd of busybodies, who, between amusement at the
joke and awe of the great men, had much ado to control their merriment.

The host began to mutter apologies, but I cut him short. "I will talk
to you to-morrow!" I said, in a voice which made him shake in his
shoes. "Now give me supper, lights, and a room--and hurry. For you,
M. Fonvelle, you are an ass! And for the gentleman there, who has
filled the rogue's purse, he will do well another time to pay the King
his dues!"

With that I left the two--Fonvelle purple with indignation, and Curtin
with eyes and mouth agape and tears stayed--and followed my host to his
best room, Maignan and La Trape attending me with very grim faces.
Here the landlord would have repeated his apologies, but my thoughts
beginning to revert to the purpose which had brought me hither, I
affected to be offended, that, by keeping all at a distance, I might
the more easily preserve my character.

I succeeded so well that, though half the town, through which the news
of my adventure had spread, as fire spreads in tinder, were assembled
outside the inn until a late hour, no one was admitted to see me; and
when I made my appearance next morning in the market-place and took my
seat, with my two attendants, at a table by the corn-measures, this
reserve had so far impressed the people that the smiles which greeted
me scarcely exceeded those which commonly welcome a tax-co