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Updated: May 7, 2025
In a second my two men stood over him. "In the King's name," La Trape cried; "let no man interfere." "Raise him up," I continued, "and set him before me; and Curtin also, and Fonvelle, and Philippon; and Lescaut, the corn-dealer, if he is here." I spoke boldly, but I felt some misgiving.
He glanced at the man I named, and shivered, and for a moment was silent. But one of the grooms approaching with the stirrup-leather, he found his voice. "Forty crowns," he muttered. "Fonvelle?" "The same." I made him confess also the sums which he had received from Lescaut and Philippon, and then the names of seven others who had been in the habit of bribing him.
With that I left the two Fonvelle purple with indignation, and Curtin with eyes and mouth agape and tears stayed and followed my host to his best room, Maignan and La Trape attending me with very grim faces.
He sprang up then, forgetting his gout, and made a frantic attempt to escape. But in a moment he was overcome, hauled away, and tied up; and though I did not wait to see the sentence carried out, but entered the inn, the shrill screams he uttered under the punishment reached me, even there, and satisfied me that Fonvelle and his fellows were not; holding their hands.
But I found nothing to laugh at in the position; since the people outside might at any moment leave us where we were to fast until morning; and, after a moment's reflection, I called out to know who the speaker on the other side was. "I am M. de Fonvelle," he answered. "Well, M. de Fonvelle," I replied, "I advise you to have a care what you do. I am M. Gringuet's deputy.
Ay, and will not Lescauts the corn-dealer, and Philippon the silk-merchant, come to him with bribes, and go free? And de Fonvelle and de Curtin they with a DE, forsooth! plead their nobility, and grease his hands, and go free? Ay, and " "Silence, woman!" the man said again, looking apprehensively at me, and from me to my attendants, who were grinning broadly.
"Now are you satisfied you in there?" But M. Curtin had not done. "He has papers," he piped again in his thin voice. "Still, M. de Fonvelle, it is well to be cautious, and " "Tut, tut! it is all right." "He has papers, but he has no authority!" I shouted. "He has seals," Fonvelle answered. "It is all right." "It is all wrong!" I retorted. "Wrong, I say!
We had not been long engaged, however, when Fonvelle put in an appearance, and elbowing the peasants aside, begged to speak with me apart. I rose and stepped back with him two or three paces; on which he winked at me in a very knowing fashion, "I am M. de Fonvelle," he said. And he winked again. "Ah!" I said. "My name is not in your list." "I find it there," I replied, raising a hand to my ear.
Before me stood the landlord of the inn, bowing with a light in each hand, as if the more he bent his backbone the more he must propitiate me; while a fat, middle-aged man at his elbow, whom I took to be Fonvelle, smiled feebly at me with a chapfallen expression.
The other man is an impostor." He laughed. "He has no papers," I cried. "Oh, yes, he has!" he answered, mocking me. "M. Curtin has seen them, my fine fellow, and he is not one to pay money without warrant." At this several laughed, and a quavering voice chimed in with "Oh, yes, he has papers! I have seen them. Still, in a case " "There!" M. Fonvelle cried, drowning the other's words.
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