tleman as completely as I have admired him,"
Genest complimented in the French way, twinkling his eyes merrily. "Many
a time I have listened to your advices in the Parliament. I say to you
'Welcome.'"

Chamilly started off to talk with his innumerable constituents in the
crowd.

"Let us cross over here, sir, and hear what they have to say about the
sermon," proposed Genest.

They crossed to a stone building on the other side of the road, and
passed through a group of countrymen into a hall of some length, where
sat sunk in a rustic rocking-chair, a singular individual, whose
observations seemed to be amusing the crowd.

In appearance, he reminded one of no less remarkable a person than the
Devil, for he bore the traditional nose and mouth of that gentleman, and
his body was lean as Casca's; but he seemed at worst a Mephistopheles
from the extravagance of the delivery of his sarcasms.

The subject of discussion was the sermon.

"Bapteme, it is terrible!" exclaimed the cadaverous humorist. "Ever
this indigenous Pius IX--fulminating, fulminating, fulminating!--Too
much inferno. The cure does half his burning for Beelzebub! We are
served in a constant auto-da-fe."

"Heh, heh, heh," creaked an old skin-and-bones, with one tooth visible,
which shook as the laugh emerged. Stolid men smoking, deigned to smile.

People seemed prepared to laugh at anything he said.

"What is it that an auto-da-fe is?" a young man demanded from a corner.

"You don't know auto-da-fes?--A dish, my child.--An auto-da-fe is
Liberal broiled."

The character of the room, at which Chrysler now had time to glance,
explained itself by a large painting of that lion-and-unicorn-supporting
-the-British-arms, which embellishes Courts of Justice.

"This room is the Circuit Court," Genest remarked--"Zotique there,
calls it the Circuitous Court--A very poor pun is received with
hospitality here."

"I should like to know that man," said Chrysler.

"Nothing easier. Zotique, come here, my cousin."

He caught sight of them, and rising, without altogether dropping his
broadly humorous expression, extended an invitation to take his
rocking-chair, which Chrysler accepted.

Zotique was like the Mephistopheles he resembled, one of those who have
been every where, seen much, done everything. Born respectably,--a
cousin of L'Honorable's--he had executed in his younger days a record
of pranks upon the neighbors, which at a safe-distance of time became
go