lapping over the edges. But up to that point the audience would not
allow him to substitute a new battle, knowing that the old ones
were the best, and sure to imporve as long as France could hold
them; and so, instead of saying to him as they would have said to
another, “Give us something fresh, we are fatigued with that old
thing,” they would say, with one voice and with a strong interest,
“Tell about the surprise at Beaulieu again–tell in three or four
times!” That is a compliment which few narrative experts have
heard in their lifetime.
At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the
Royal Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken
with us to it; next, his talk was full of what he would have done if
he had been there; and within two days he was telling what he did
do when he was there. His mill was fairly started, now, and could
be trusted to take care of its affair. Within three nights afterward
all his battles were taking a rest, for already his worshipers in the
tap-room were so infatuated with the great tale of the Royal
Audience that they would have nothing else, and so besotted with
it were they that they would have cried if they could not have
gotten it.
No‰l Rainguesson hid himself and heard it, and came and told me,
and after that we went together to listen, bribing the inn hostess to
let us have her little private parlor, where we could stand at the
wickets in the door and see and hear.
The tap-room was large, yet had a snug and cozy look, with its
inviting little tables and chairs scattered irregularly over its red
brick floor, and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide
chimney. It was a comfortable place to be in on such chilly and
blustering March nights as these, and a goodly company had taken
shelter there, and were sipping their wine in contentment and
gossiping one with another in a neighborly way while they waited
for the historian. The host, the hostess, and their pretty daughter
were flying here and there and yonder among the tables and doing
their best to keep up with the orders. The room was about forty
feet square, and a space or aisle down the center of it had been
kept vacant and reserved for the Paladin’s needs. At the end of it
was a platform ten or twelve feet wide, with a big chair and a
small table on it, and three steps leading up to it.
Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the
farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster,
the weaver, the backer, the miller’s man with his dusty coat, and so
on; and conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the
barber-surgeon, for he is that in all villages. As he has to pull
everybody’s teeth and purge and bleed all the grown people once a
month to keep their health sound, he knows everybody, and by
constant contact with all sorts of folk becomes a master of
etiquette and manners and a conversationalist of large facility.
There were plenty of carriers, drovers, and their sort, and
journeymen artisans.
When the Paladin presently came sauntering indolently in, he was
received with a cheer, and the barber hustled forward and greeted
him with several low and most graceful and courtly bows, also
taking his hand an touching his lips to it. Then he called in a loud
voice for a stoup of wine for the Paladin, and when the host’s
daughter brought it up on the platform and dropped her courtesy
and departed, the barber called after her, and told her to add the
wine to his score. This won him ejaculations of approval, which
pleased him very much and made his little rat-eyes shine; and such
applause is right and proper, for when we do a liberal and gallant
thing it is but natural that we should wish to see notice taken of it.
The barber called upon the people to rise and drink the Paladin’s