'Perhaps it will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of
Orleans, and may he soon be King!'



CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD

Words so reckless fairly shook the three men out of their anger.
For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then
the wine merchant clapped his hand on the table.

'That is enough,' he said, with a look at his companions. 'I
think that there can be no mistake about that. As damnable
treason as ever I heard whispered! I congratulate you, sir, on
your boldness. As for you,' he continued, turning with an ugly
sneer to the landlord, 'I shall know now the company you keep! I
was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!'

But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his
character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many
words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished, raising in
a twinkling such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a
roar like a bull's, he ran headlong at the table, and overturned
it on the top of me. Fortunately the woman saved the lamp, and
fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the
Chateau watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and
platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned
me to the ground among the ruins of my stool. Having me at this