Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don't know who they are.
Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I'm the
son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them?--about the execution
of my father? It wouldn't be funny. Better be a disguised Russian prince
and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor Alexander. Or I
might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn't I perplex 'em! But
no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to me as if he
had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I can mimic
an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord Byron,
travelling incognito. Sapristi! I'll command the troops of Ali, pacha of
Janina!"

During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust
rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.

"What dust!" cried Mistigris.

"Henry IV. is dead!" retorted his master. "If you'd say it was scented
with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion."

"You think you're witty," replied Mistigris. "Well, it _is_ like vanilla
at times."

"In the Levant--" said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.

"'Ex Oriente flux,'" remarked Mistigris's master, interrupting the
speaker.

"I said in the Levant, from which I have just returned," continued
Georges, "the dust smells very good; but here it smells of nothing,
except in some old dust-barrel like this."

"Has monsieur lately returned from the Levant?" said Mistigris,
maliciously. "He isn't much tanned by the sun."

"Oh! I've just left my bed after an illness of three months, from the
germ, so the doctors said, of suppressed plague."

"Have you had the plague?" cried the count, with a gesture of alarm.
"Pierrotin, stop!"

"Go on, Pierrotin," said Mistigris. "Didn't you hear him say it was
inward, his plague?" added the rapin, talking back to Monsieur de
Serizy. "It isn't catching; it only comes out in conversation."

"Mistigris! if you interfere again I'll have you put off into the road,"
said his master. "And so," he added, turning to Georges, "monsieur has
been to the East?"

"Yes, monsieur; first to Egypt, then to Greece, where I served under
Ali, pacha of Janina, with whom I had a terrible quarrel. There's no
enduring those climates long; besides, the emotions of all kinds in
Oriental life have disorganized my liver."

"What, have you served as a soldier?" asked the fat farmer. "How old are
you?"

"Twenty-nine," replied Georg