ix livres annual feudal rent of your holding."

"No, twenty-seven."

"Well, say twenty-seven. Now I am the intendant of this new young fool
of a Seigneur, who is away all the time at Versailles. I have the sole
control. Let us strike a bargain. Give me your vote and I will quietly
let you off ten livres of rental. If I wish, I can find some reason for
reporting you at seventeen."

Pioche's eyes assumed an uncertain light of cunning and greed.

"Don't do it, Pioche," cried a one-eyed cobbler. "Notary Mule offers to
abolish all these Seigneur's rights if we elect _him_ to the
States-General."

"Shut up, you tan-smelling bow-legs!" the enraged Populus retorted at a
shout. "Who is this Mule, that he should represent the majesty of the
bailiwick of Grelot? A cur whose very name is enough to relegate him to
limbo; whose deeds are atrocities in ink, whose----"

"Nevertheless he is going to lift our dues. Master Mule is the people's
man," the cobbler returned valiantly.

"What, Mule!" cried Populus with still greater scorn. "Where has he the
power? Am I not the intendant? Is it not I who alone control the dues in
my own person? Yes, gentlemen, who will deny that I hold, so to speak,
the keys of heaven and earth in Grelot, and whom I bind shall be bound
and whom I loose shall be loosed, notwithstanding the impotent cajolery
of all the long-eared Mules in the kingdom?"

The whole population of the village were by this time gaping around him.

"What, you clapper-jawed thief," a voice thundered from behind, "you
venture to malign my name--the honourable appellation of a respectable
family! Know, sir, that I spit upon you, I strike you, I say bah to your
face!"

Maitre Mule was a little round-faced man, forced by his physical
inferiority to Populus to take out his valour by word of mouth.

The two went at it with recriminations, from which Germain learnt much
of his own affairs. The noise of the pair shouting and threatening to
fight together, and the riotous cries of the crowd, "No dues!" "Notary,
give us bread!" grew at length so great that the innkeeper rushed out
exclaiming, "Peace, Messieurs, peace. I have a gentleman from Paris
sleeping upstairs. See, there is the baker's shop just open."

The word "baker" operated better than magic. The rioters rushed over to
the wicket, which was fixed in the door of the shop, and fought and
snarled with each other for their slender purchases of the bread of
famine.

Such wer