gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended

their operations to look at him. He looked at them and saw in

them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of miseryworn

face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of

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Frenchmen and English superstition which should survive the

truth through the best part of a hundred years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces

that drooped before him, as the like of himself had dropped before

Monseigneur of the Courtonly the difference was, that these

faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiatewhen a

grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.

“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows

closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the

Paris fountain.

“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.

“What man, pig? And why look there?”

“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoethe

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

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

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 overlike 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