`I passed you on the road?'

`Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.'

`Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?'

`Monseigneur, it is true.

`What did you look at, so fixedly?'

`Monseigneur, I looked at the man.'

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.

`Mat man, pig? And why look there?'

`Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe the drag.'

`Who?' demanded the traveller.

`Monseigneur, the man.'

`May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?'

`Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.'

`Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?'

`With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over--like this!'

He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

`what was he like?'

`Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!'

The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.

`Truly, you did well,' said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, `to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!'

Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.

`Bah! Go aside!' said Monsieur Gabelle.

`Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.'