ily dyer, winking
at his wife.

To pick out the greatest gossip, the sharpest tongue, the most
inveterate cackler of the neighborhood! It meant that Madame Vernier
was to take a witness to the scene between the traveller and the lunatic
which should keep the town in laughter for a month. Monsieur and Madame
Vernier played their part so well that Gaudissart had no suspicions, and
straightway fell into the trap. He gallantly offered his arm to Madame
Vernier, and believed that he made, as they went along, the conquest
of both ladies, for those benefit he sparkled with wit and humor and
undetected puns.

The house of the pretended banker stood at the entrance to the Valley
Coquette. The place, called La Fuye, had nothing remarkable about it. On
the ground floor was a large wainscoted salon, on either side of which
opened the bedroom of the good-man and that of his wife. The salon
was entered from an ante-chamber, which served as the dining-room and
communicated with the kitchen. This lower door, which was wholly without
the external charm usually seen even in the humblest dwellings in
Touraine, was covered by a mansard story, reached by a stairway built
on the outside of the house against the gable end and protected by
a shed-roof. A little garden, full of marigolds, syringas, and
elder-bushes, separated the house from the fields; and all around the
courtyard were detached buildings which were used in the vintage season
for the various processes of making wine.

CHAPTER IV

Margaritis was seated in an arm-chair covered with yellow Utrecht
velvet, near the window of the salon, and he did not stir as the two
ladies entered with Gaudissart. His thoughts were running on the casks
of wine. He was a spare man, and his bald head, garnished with a few
spare locks at the back of it, was pear-shaped in conformation.
His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by
discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife,
the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency
of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin,
contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,--something
between that of a retired professor of rhetoric and a rag-picker.

"Monsieur Margaritis," cried Madame Vernier, addressing him, "come, stir
about! Here is a gentleman whom my husband sends to you, and you must
listen to him with great attention. Put away your ma