ry willing to tell me, but at length confessed, to my
astonishment, that it was M. Grabot.

"Grabot--Grabot!" I said, striving to recollect where I had heard the
name. "The Mayor of Bottitort?"

The solemn man made an atrocious grimace. Then, "Yes, monsieur, the
Mayor of Bottitort," he said frankly. "A year ago he put Philibert in
the stocks for a riddle; that is his affair. And the woman of this
house has more than once befriended me, and he is for turning her out
for a debt she does not owe; and that is my affair. However, your
lordship's arrival has saved him for this time."

"You expected him here this evening, then?"

"He is coming," he answered, with more than his usual gloom. "He
passed this way this morning, and announced that on his return he
should spend the night here. We found the goodwife all of a tremble
when we arrived. He is a hard man, monsieur," the mountebank continued
bitterly. "She cried after him that she hoped that God would change
his heart, but he only answered that even if St. Brieuc changed his
body--you know the legend, monseigneur, doubtless--he should be here."

"And here he is," the other, who had been looking out of one of the
windows, cried. "I see his lanthorn coming down the hill. And by St.
Brieuc, I have it! I have it," the droll continued, suddenly spinning
round in a wild dance of triumph on the floor, and then as suddenly
stopping and falling into an attitude before us. "Monsieur, if you
will help us, I have the richest jest ever played. Pierre, listen.
You, gentlemen all, listen! We will pretend that he is changed. He is
a pompous man; he thinks the Mayor of Bottitort equal to the Saint
Pere. Well, Pierre shall be M. Grabot, Mayor of Bottitort. You,
monsieur, that we may give him enough of mayors, shall be the Mayor of
Gol, and I will be the Mayor of St. Just. This gentleman shall swear
to us, so shall the servants. For him, he does not exist. Oh, we will
punish him finely."

"But," I said, astounded by the very audacity of the rogue's
proposition, "you do not flatter yourself that you will deceive him?"

"We shall, monsieur, if you will help," he answered confidently. "I
will be warrant for it we shall."

The thing had little of dignity in it, and I wonder now that I
complied; but I have always shared with the King, my master, a taste
for drolleries of the kind suggested; while nothing that I had as yet
heard of this Grabot was of a nature to induce