was
too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked washing, I
felt the change, and laid it savagely at Mademoiselle's door.

The landlord, watching me stealthily from his place by the hearth, read
my thoughts and chuckled aloud.

'Palace fare, palace manners!' he muttered scornfully. 'Set a beggar on
horseback, and he will ride--back to the inn!'

'Keep a civil tongue, will you!' I answered, scowling at him.

'Have you finished?' he retorted.

I rose, without deigning to reply, and, going to the fire, drew off my
boots, which were wet through. He, on the instant, swept off the wine
and loaf to the cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had
used, took it, opened the back door, and went out, leaving the door
ajar. The draught which came in beat the flame of the lamp this way and
that, and gave the dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable. I
rose angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending to close it
with a bang.

But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and jamb, which
stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in which the housewife washed
pots and the like. I felt some surprise, therefore, when I found a light
there at this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what she was
doing.

She was seated on the mud floor, with a rush-light before her, and on
either side of her a high-piled heap of refuse and rubbish. From one
of these, at the moment I caught sight of her, she was sorting
things--horrible filthy sweepings of road or floor--to the other;
shaking and sifting each article as she passed it across, and then
taking up another and repeating the action with it, and so on--all
minutely, warily, with an air of so much patience and persistence that I
stood wondering. Some things--rags--she held up between her eyes and
the light, some she passed through her fingers, some she fairly tore
in pieces. And all the time her husband stood watching her greedily, my
platter still in his hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated him.

I stood looking, also, for half a minute, perhaps; then the man's
eye, raised for a single second to the door-way, met mine. He started,
muttered something to his wife, and, quick as thought, he kicked
the light out, leaving the shed in darkness. Cursing him for an
ill-conditioned fellow, I walked back to the fire, laughing. In a
twinkling he followed me, his face dark with rage. 'VENTRE-SAINT-GRIS!'
he exclaimed, thrusting himself