llector.
Some had paid, and, foreseeing the necessity of paying again, found
little that was diverting in the jest. Others thought it no laughing
matter to pay once; and a few had come as ill out of the adventure as I
had. Under these circumstances, we quickly settled to work, no one
entertaining the slightest suspicion; and La Trape, who could
accommodate himself to anything, playing the part of clerk, I was
presently receiving money and hearing excuses; the minute acquaintance
with the routine of the finances, which I had made it my business to
acquire, rendering the work easy to me.

We had not been long engaged, however, when Fonvelle put in an
appearance, and elbowing the peasants aside, begged to speak with me
apart. I rose and stepped back with him two or three paces; on which
he winked at me in a very knowing fashion, "I am M. de Fonvelle," he
said. And he winked again.

"Ah!" I said.

"My name is not in your list."

"I find it there," I replied, raising a hand to my ear.

"Tut, tut! you do not understand," he muttered. "Has not Gringuet
told you?"

"What?" I said, pretending to be a little deaf.

"Has not--"

I shook my head.

"Has not Gringuet told you?" he repeated, reddening with anger; and
this time speaking, on compulsion, so loudly that the peasants could
hear him.

I answered him in the same tone. "Yes," I said roundly. "He has told
me; of course, that every year you give him two hundred livres to omit
your name."

He glanced behind him with an oath. "Man, are you mad?" he gasped,
his jaw falling. "They will hear you."

"Yes," I said loudly, "I mean them to hear me."

I do not know what he thought of this--perhaps that I was mad--but he
staggered back from me, and looked wildly round. Finding everyone
laughing, he looked again at me, but still failed to understand; on
which, with another oath, he turned on his heel, and forcing his way
through the grinning crowd, was out of sight in a moment.

I was about to return to my seat, when a pursy, pale-faced man, with
small eyes and a heavy jowl, whom I had before noticed, pushed his way
through the line, and came to me. Though his neighbours were all
laughing he was sober, and in a moment I understood why.

"I am very deaf," he said in a whisper. "My name, Monsieur, is
Philippon. I am a--"

I made a sign to him that I could not hear.

"I am the silk merchant," he continued pretty audibly, but with a
suspicious glance