“You expected him here this evening, then?”
“He is coming,” he answered, with more than his usual gloom. “He passed this way this morning, and announced that on his return he should spend the night here. We found the goodwife all of a tremble when we arrived. He is a hard man, monsieur,” the mountebank continued bitterly. “She cried after him that she hoped that God would change his heart, but he only answered that even if St. Brieuc changed his body — you know the legend, monseigneur, doubtless — he should be here.”
“And here he is,” the other, who had been looking out of one of the windows, cried. “I see his lanthorn coming down the hill. And by St. Brieuc, I have it! I have it,” the droll continued, suddenly spinning round in a wild dance of triumph on the floor, and then as suddenly stopping and falling into an attitude before us. “Monsieur, if you will help us, I have the richest jest ever played. Pierre, listen. You, gentlemen all, listen! We will pretend that he is changed. He is a pompous man; he thinks the Mayor of Bottitort equal to the Saint Pere. Well, Pierre shall be M. Grabot, Mayor of Bottitort. You, monsieur, that we may give him enough of mayors, shall be the Mayor of Gol, and I will be the Mayor of St. Just. This gentleman shall swear to us, so shall the servants. For him, he does not exist. Oh, we will punish him finely.”
“But,” I said, astounded by the very audacity of the rogue’s proposition, “you do not flatter yourself that you will deceive him?”
“We shall, monsieur, if you will help,” he answered confidently. “I will be warrant for it we shall.”
The thing had little of dignity in it, and I wonder now that I complied; but I have always shared with the King, my master, a taste for drolleries of the kind suggested; while nothing that I had as yet heard of this Grabot was of a nature to induce me to spare him. Seeing that La Font was tickled with the idea, and that the servants were a-grin, and the more eager to trick others as they had just been tricked themselves, I was tempted to consent.
After this, the preparations took not a minute. Philibert covered his fool’s clothes with a cloak, and their table was drawn nearer to the fire, so as, with mine, to take up the whole hearth. La Trape fell into an attitude behind me; and the Breton, adopting a refinement suggested at the last moment, was sent out to intercept Grabot before he entered, and tell him that the inn was full, and that he had better pass on.
The knave did his business so well that Grabot, being just such a man as the stroller had described to us, the altercation on the threshold was of itself the most amusing thing in the world. “Who?” we heard a loud, coarse voice exclaim. “Who d’ye say are here, man?”
“The Mayor of Bottitort.”
“MILLE DIABLES!”
“The Mayor of Bottitort and the Mayors of Gol and St. Just,” the servant repeated as if he noticed nothing amiss.
“That is a lie!” the new comer replied, with a snort of triumph, “and an impudent one. But you have got the wrong sow by the ear this time.”
“Why, man,” a third voice, somewhat nasal and rustical, struck in, “don’t you know the Mayor of Bottitort?”
“I should,” my Breton answered bluntly, and making, as we guessed, a stand before them. “For I am his servant, and he is this moment at his meat.”
“The Mayor of Bottitort?”
“Yes.”
“M. Grabot?”
“Yes.”
“And you are his servant?”
“I have thought so for some time,” the Breton answered contemptuously.
The Mayor fairly roared in his indignation. “You — his servant! The Mayor of Bottitort’s?” he cried in a voice of thunder. “I’ll tell you what you are; you are a liar! — a liar, man, that is what you are! Why, you fool, I am the Mayor of Bottitort myself. Now, do you see how you have wasted yourself? Out of my way! Jehan, follow me in. I shall look into this. There is some knavery here, but if Simon Grabot cannot get to the bottom of it the Mayor of Bottitort will. Follow me, I say. My servant indeed? Come, come!”
And, still grumbling, he flung open the door, which the Breton had left ajar, and stalked in upon us, fuming and blowing out his cheeks for all the world like a bantam cock with its feathers erect. He was a short, pursy man; with a short nose, a wide face, and small eyes. But had he been Caesar and Alexander rolled into one, he could not have crossed the threshold with a more tremendous assumption of dignity. Once inside, he stood and glared at us, somewhat taken aback, I think, for the moment by our numbers; but recovering himself almost immediately, he strutted towards us, and, without uncovering or saluting us, he asked in a deep voice who was responsible for the man outside.
“I am,” the graver mountebank answered, looking at the stranger with a sober air of surprise. “He is my servant.”
“Ah!” the Mayor exclaimed, with a withering glance. “And who, may I ask, are you?”
“You may ask, certainly,” the player answered drily. “But until you take off your hat I shall not answer.”
The Mayor gasped at this rebuff, and turned, if it were possible, a shade redder; but he uncovered.
“Now I do not mind telling you,” Pierre continued, with a mild dignity admirably assumed, “that I am Simon Grabot, and have the honour to be Mayor of Bottitort.”
“You!”
“Yes, monsieur, I; though perhaps unworthy.”
I looked to see an explosion, but the Mayor was too far gone. “Why, you swindling impostor,” he said, with something that was almost admiration in his tone. “You are the very prince of cheats! The king of cozeners! But for all that, let me tell you, you have chosen the wrong ROLE this time. For I — I, sir, am the Mayor of Bottitort, the very man whose name you have taken!”
Pierre stared at him in composed silence, which his comrade was the first to break. “Is he mad?” he said in a low voice.
The grave man shook his head.
The Mayor heard and saw; and getting no other answer, began to tremble between passion and a natural, though ill-defined, misgiving, which the silent gaze of so large a party — for we all looked at him compassionately — was well calculated to produce. “Mad?” he cried. “No, but some one is, Sir,” he continued, turning to La Font with a gesture in which appeal and impatience were curiously blended, “Do you know this man?”
“M. Grabot? Certainly,” he answered, without blushing. “And have these ten years.”
“And you say that he is M. Grabot?” the poor Mayor retorted, his jaw falling ludicrously.
“Certainly. Who should he be?”
The Mayor looked round him, sudden beads of sweat on his brow. “MON DIEU!” he cried. “You are all in it. Here, you, do you know this person?”
La Trape, to whom he addressed himself, shrugged his shoulders. “I should,” he said. “The Mayor is pretty well known about here.”
“The Mayor?”
“Ay.”
“But I am the Mayor — I,” Grabot answered eagerly, tapping himself on the breast in the most absurd manner. “Don’t you know me, my friend?”
“I never saw you before, to my knowledge,” the rascal answered contemptuously; “and I know this country pretty well. I should think that you have been crossing St. Brieuc’s brook, and forgotten to say your—”
“Hush!” the stout player interposed with some sharpness. “Let him alone. LE BON DIEU knows that such a thing may happen to the best of us.”
The Mayor clapped his hand to his head. “Sir,” he said almost humbly, addressing the last speaker, “I seem to know your voice. Your name, if you please?”
“Fracasse,” he answered pleasantly. “I am Mayor of Gol.”
“You — Fracasse, Mayor of Gol?” Grabot exclaimed between rage and terror. “But Fracasse is a tall man. I know him as well as I know my brother.”
The pseudo-Fracasse smiled, but did not contradict him.
The Mayor wiped the moisture from his brow. He had all the characteristics of an obstinate man; but if there is one thing which I have found in a long career more true
than another, it is that no one can resist the statements of his fellows. So much, I verily believe, is this the case, that if ten men maintain black to be white, the eleventh will presently be brought into their opinion. Besides, the Mayor had a currish side. He looked piteously from one to another of us, his cheeks seemed to grow in a moment pale and flabby, and he was on the point of whimpering, when at the last moment he bethought him of his servant, and turned to him in a spurt of sudden thankfulness. “Why, Jehan, man, I had forgotten you,” he said. “Are these men mad, or am I?”
But Jehan, a simple rustic, was in a state of ludicrous bewilderment. “Dol, master, I don’t know,” he stuttered, rubbing his head.
“But I am myself,” the Mayor cried, in a most ridiculous tone of remonstrance.
“Dol, and I don’t know,” the man whimpered. “I do believe that there is a change in you. I never saw you look the like before. And I never said any PATER either. Holy saints!” the poor fool continued piteously, “I wish I were at home. And there, for all I know, my wife has got another man.”
He began to blubber at this; which to us was the most ludicrous thought, so that it was all we could do to restrain our laughter. But the Mayor saw things in another light. Shaken by our steady persistence in our story, and astounded by our want of respect, the defection of his follower utterly cowed him. After staring wildly about him for a moment, he fairly turned tail, and sat down on an old box by the door, where with his hands on his knees, he looked out before him with such an expression of chap-fallen bewilderment as nearly discovered our plot by throwing us into fits of laughter.
Still he was not persuaded; for, from time to time, he roused himself, and lifting his head cast suspicious glances at our party. But the two strollers, who were now in their element, played their parts with so much craft and delicacy, and with such an infinity of humour besides, that everything he overheard plunged him deeper in the slough. They knew something of local affairs, and called one another Mayor very naturally; and mentioning their wives, let drop other scraps of information that, catching his ear, made the wretched man every now and then sit up as if a wasp had stung him. One story in particular which the false Mayor told — and which, it appeared, was to the knowledge of all the country round the real Mayor’s stock anecdote — had an absurd effect upon him. He straightened himself, listened as if his life depended upon it, and when he heard the well-known ending, uttered, doubtless, in something of his old tone, he collapsed into himself like a man who had no longer faith in anything.
Presently, however, an effort of common-sense would again disperse the fog. He would raise his head, his eye grow bright, something of his old pugnacity would come back to him. He would appear — this more than once — to be on the point of rising to challenge us. But these occasions were as skilfully met as they were easily detected; and as the rogues had invariably some stroke in reserve that in a twinkling flung him back into his old state of dazed bewilderment, while it well-nigh killed us with stifled mirth, they only gave ever new point to the jest.
This, to be brief, was carried on until I retired; and probably the two strollers would have kept it up longer if the ludicrous doubt whether he was himself, which they had lodged in the Mayor’s mind, had not at last spurred him to action. An hour before midnight, feeling it rankle intolerably, I suppose, he sprang up on a sudden, dragged the door open, darted out with the air of a madman, and in a moment was lost in the darkness of the moor.
When I rose in the morning, therefore, I found him gone, the strollers looking glum, and the good-wife and her girl between tears and reproaches. I could not but feel, on my part, that I had somewhat stooped in the night’s diversion; but before I had time to reflect much on that an unexpected trait in the strollers’ conduct reconciled me to this odd experience. They proposed to leave when I did; but a little before the start they came to me, and set before me very ingenuously that the woman of the house might suffer through our jest; if I would help her therefore, they would subscribe two crowns so that she might have a substantial sum to offer on account of her debt. As I took this to be the greater part of their capital, and judged for other reasons that the offer was genuine, I received it in the best part, and found their good-nature no less pleasant than their foolery. I handed over three crowns for our share, and on that we parted; they set out with their bundles strapped to their backs, and I waited somewhat impatiently for La Trape and the Breton to bring round the horses.
Before these appeared, however, La Font, who was at the door, cried out that the two players were coming hack; and going to the window I saw with astonishment a whole troop, some mounted and some on foot, hurrying down the hill after them. For a moment I felt some alarm, supposing it to be a scheme of Epernon’s to seize my person; and I cursed the imprudence which had led me to expose myself in this solitary place. But a second glance showing me that the Mayor of Bottitort was among the foremost, I repented almost as seriously of the unlucky trifling that had landed me in this foolish plight.
I even debated whether I should mount and, if it were possible, get clear before they arrived; but the rueful faces of the two players as they appeared breathless in the doorway, and the liking I had taken for the rascals, decided me to stand my ground “What is it?” I said.
“The Mayor, monsieur,” Philibert answered, while Pierre pursed up his lips with gloomy gravity. “I fear it will not stop at the stocks this time,” the rogue continued with a grimace.
His comrade muttered something about a rod and a fool’s back; but M. Grabot’s entrance cut his witticism short. The Mayor, between shame and rage, and the gratification of his revenge, was almost bursting, and the moment he caught sight of us opened fire. “All, M. de Gol; we have them all!” he cried exultingly. “Now they shall smart for it! Depend upon it, it is some deep-laid scheme of that party. I have said so.”
But the Mayor of Gol, a stout, big, placid man, looked at us doubtfully. “Well,” he said, “I know these two; they are strolling mountebanks, honest knaves enough but always in some mischief.”
“What, strolling clowns?” M. Grabot rejoined, his face falling.
“Ay, and you may depend upon it it is some joke of theirs,” his friend answered, his eyes twinkling. “I begin to think that you would have done better if you had waited a little before bringing M. le Comte into the matter.”
“Ah, but there are these two,” M. Grabot cried, as he recovered from the momentary panic into which the other’s words had thrown him. “Depend upon it they are the chief movers. What else but treason could they mean by asserting that one of them was Mayor of Bottitort? By denying my title? By setting up other officers than those to whom his Gracious Majesty has delegated his authority?”
“Umph!” his brother Mayor said, “I don’t know these gentlemen.”
“No!” his companion cried in triumph. “But I intend to know them; and to know a good deal about them. Guard the window there,” he continued fussily. “Where is my clerk? Is M. de Laval coming?”
Two or three cried obsequiously that he had crossed the hill; and would arrive immediately.
Hearing this, and thinking it more becoming not to enter into an altercation, I kept my seat and the scornful silence I had hitherto maintained. The two Mayors had brought with them a posse of busybodies — huissiers, constables, tip-staves, and the like; and these all gaped upon us as if they saw before them the most notable traitors of the age. The women of the house wept in a corner, and the strollers shrugged their shoulders and strove to appear at their ease. But the only person who felt the indifference which they assumed was La Font; who, obnoxious to none of the annoyances which I foresaw, could hardly restrain his mirth at the DENOUEMENT which he anticipated.
Meanwhile the Mayor, foreseeing a very different issue, stood blowing out his cheeks and fixing us with his little eyes with an expression of dignity that would have pleased me vastly if I had been free to enjoy it. But the reflection that Laval’s presence, which would cut the knot of our diff
iculties, would also place me at the mercy of his wit, did not enable me to contemplate it with entire indifference.
By-and-by we heard him dismount, and a moment later he came in with a gentleman and two or three armed servants. He did not at once see me, but as the crowd made way for him he addressed himself sharply to M. Grabot. “Well, have you got them?” he said.
“Certainly, M. le Comte.”
“Oh! very well. Now for the particulars, then. You must state your charge quickly, for I have to be in Vitre to-day.”
“He alleged that he had been appointed Mayor of Bottitort,” Grabot answered pompously.
“Umph! I don’t know?” M. de Laval muttered, looking round with a frown of discontent. “I hope that you have not brought me hither on a fool’s errand. Which one?”
“That one,” the Mayor said, pointing to the solemn man, whose gravity and depression were now something preternatural.
“Oh!” M. de Laval grumbled. “But that is not all, I suppose. What of the others?”
M. Grabot pointed to me. “That one,” he said —
He got no farther; for M. de Laval, springing forward, seized my hand and saluted me warmly. “Why, your excellency,” he cried, in a tone of boundless surprise, “what are you doing in this GALERE! All last evening I waited for you, at my house, and now—”
“Here I am,” I answered jocularly, “in charge it seems, M. le Comte!”
“MON DIEU!” he cried. “I don’t understand it!”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t ask me,” I said. “Perhaps your friend the Mayor call tell you.”
“But, Monsieur, I do not understand,” the Mayor answered piteously, his mouth agape with horror, his fat cheeks turning in a moment all colours. “This gentleman, whom you seem to know, Monsieur le Comte—”
“Is the Marquis de Rosny, President of the Council, blockhead!” Laval cried irately. “You madman! you idiot!” he continued, as light broke in upon him, and he saw that it was indeed on a fool’s errand that he had been roused so early. “Is this your conspiracy? Have you dared to bring me here—”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 188