f, not only as to the
accomplishment but, still more, in the invention of their pranks.
They came at last to possess the genius for evil that Panurge so much
delighted in; which provokes laughter, and covers its victims with such
ridicule that they dare not complain. Naturally, these sons of good
families of Issoudun possessed and obtained information in their
households, which gave them the ways and means for the perpetration of
their outrages.

Sometimes the young devils incarnate lay in ambush along the Grand'rue
or the Basse rue, two streets which are, as it were, the arteries of the
town, into which many little side streets open. Crouching, with their
heads to the wind, in the angles of the wall and at the corners of the
streets, at the hour when all the households were hushed in their first
sleep, they called to each other in tones of terror from ambush to
ambush along the whole length of the town: "What's the matter?" "What is
it?" till the repeated cries woke up the citizens, who appeared in
their shirts and cotton night-caps, with lights in their hands,
asking questions of one another, holding the strangest colloquies, and
exhibiting the queerest faces.

A certain poor bookbinder, who was very old, believed in hobgoblins.
Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a small basement shop. The
Knights, disguised as devils, invaded the place in the middle of the
night, put him into his own cutting-press, and left him shrieking to
himself like the souls in hell. The poor man roused the neighbors, to
whom he related the apparitions of Lucifer; and as they had no means of
undeceiving him, he was driven nearly insane.

In the middle of a severe winter, the Knights took down the chimney of
the collector of taxes, and built it up again in one night apparently as
it was before, without making the slightest noise, or leaving the least
trace of their work. But they so arranged the inside of the chimney as
to send all the smoke into the house. The collector suffered for two
months before he found out why his chimney, which had always drawn so
well, and of which he had often boasted, played him such tricks; he was
then obliged to build a new one.

At another time, they put three trusses of hay dusted with brimstone,
and a quantity of oiled paper down the chimney of a pious old woman who
was a friend of Madame Hochon. In the morning, when she came to light
her fire, the poor creature, who was very gentle and kindly, imagi