I answered him in the same tone. "Yes," I said roundly. "He has told me; of course, that every year you give him two hundred livres to omit your name."He glanced behind him with an oath. "Man, are you mad?" he gasped, his jaw falling. "They will hear you.""Yes," I said loudly, "I mean them to hear me."I do not know what he thought of this--perhaps that I was mad--but he staggered back from me, and looked wildly round. Finding everyone laughing, he looked again at me, but still failed to understand; on which, with another oath, he turned on his heel, and forcing his way through the grinning crowd, was out of sight in a moment.
I was about to return to my seat, when a pursy, pale-faced man, with small eyes and a heavy jowl, whom I had before noticed, pushed his way through the line, and came to me. Though his neighbours were all laughing he was sober, and in a moment Iunderstood why.
"I am very deaf," he said in a whisper. "My name, Monsieur, is Philippon. I am a--"I made a sign to him that I could not hear.
"I am the silk merchant," he continued pretty audibly, but with a suspicious glance behind him. "Probably you have--"Again I signed to him that I could not hear.
"You have heard of me?"
"From M. Gringuet?" I said very loudly.
"Yes," he answered in a similar tone; for, aware that deaf persons cannot hear their own voices and are seldom able to judge how loudly they are speaking, I had led him to this. "And Isuppose that you will do as he did?"
"How?" I asked. "In what way?"
He touched his pocket with a stealthy gesture, unseen by the people behind him.
Again I made a sign as if I could not hear.
"Take the usual little gift?" he said, finding himself compelled to speak.
"I cannot hear a word," I bellowed. By this time the crowd were shaking with laughter.
"Accept the usual gift?" he said, his fat, pale face perspiring, and his little pig's eyes regarding me balefully.
"And let you pay one quarter?" I said.
"Yes," he answered.
But this, and the simplicity with which he said it, drew so loud a roar of laughter from the crowd as penetrated even to his dulled senses. Turning abruptly, as if a bee had stung him, he found the place convulsed with merriment; and perceiving, in an instant, that I had played upon him, though he could not understand how or why, he glared about him a moment, muttered something which I could not catch, and staggered away with the gait of a drunken man.
After this, it was useless to suppose that I could amuse myself with others. The crowd, which had never dreamed of such a tax-collector, and could scarcely believe either eyes or ears, hesitated to come forward even to pay; and I was considering what I should do next, when a commotion in one corner of the square drew my eyes to that quarter. I looked and saw at first only Curtin. Then, the crowd dividing and making way for him, Iperceived that he had the real Gringuet with him--Gringuet, who rode through the market with an air of grim majesty, with one foot in a huge slipper and eyes glaring with ill-temper.
Doubtless Curtin, going to him on the chance of hearing something of the rogue who had cheated him, had apprised the tax-collector of the whole matter; for on seeing me in my chair of state, he merely grinned in a vicious way, and cried to the nearest not to let me escape. "We have lost one rogue, but we will hang the other," he said. And while the townsfolk stood dumbfounded round us, he slipped with a groan from his horse, and bade his two servants seize me.
"And do you," he called to the host, "see that you help, my man!
You have harboured him, and you shall pay for it if he escapes."With that he hopped a step nearer; and then, not dreaming of resistance, sank with another groan--for his foot was immensely swollen by the journey--into the chair from which I had risen.
A glance showed me that, if I would not be drawn into an unseemly brawl, I must act; and meeting Maignan's eager eye fixed upon my face, I nodded. In a second he seized the unsuspecting Gringuet by the neck, snatched him up from the chair, and flung him half-a-dozen paces away. "Lie there," he cried, "you insolent rascal!
Who told you to sit before your betters?"
The violence of the action, and Maignan's heat, were such that the nearest drew back affrighted; and even Gringuet's servants recoiled, while the market people gasped with astonishment. But I knew that the respite would last a moment only, and I stood forward. "Arrest that man," I said, pointing to the collector, who was grovelling on the ground, nursing his foot and shrieking foul threats at us.
