-Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot, and
Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?"

"He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is," continued
Charles; "and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls
himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate of
Blangy. If you merely touch his rope he'll entangle you so cleverly that
you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself; and for
that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame herself was
taken in, and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king of tricks, that
old fellow!"

The groom's gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal
from his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden
beneath Pere Fourchon's apparent guilelessness came back to him, and he
owned himself "gulled" by the Burgundian beggar.

"You would never believe, monsieur," said Charles, as they reached the
portico at Les Aigues, "how much one is forced to distrust everybody and
everything in the country,--especially here, where the general is not
much liked--"

"Why not?"

"That's more than I know," said Charles, with the stupid air servants
assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their
superiors, which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.

"Here you are, truant!" cried the general, coming out on the terrace
when he heard the horses. "Here he is; don't be uneasy!" he called back
to his wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. "Now the Abbe
Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles," he said to the groom.

CHAPTER III. THE TAVERN

The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters
of projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on his
haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The proximity
of a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the necessity
for a lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron gate, like
those made in Buffon's time for the Jardin des Plantes, opened on a
short paved way which led to the country road (formerly kept in order
by Les Aigues and the Soulanges family) which unites Conches, Cerneux,
Blangy, and Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a wreath, for the whole
road is lined with flowering hedges and little houses covered with roses
and honey-suckle and other climbing plants.

There,