“Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told you before,” said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the arm. “Oh, my thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, “Rely on me.” Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach. “Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, “if you don’t mean to go faster than this, say so! I’ll pay my fare and take a post-horse at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which can’t be delayed.” “Oh! he’ll go well enough,” said Pere Leger. “Besides, the distance isn’t great.” “I am never more than half an hour late,” asserted Pierrotin. “Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,” said Georges, “so, get on.” “Perhaps he’s afraid of shaking monsieur,” said Mistigris looking round at the count. “But you shouldn’t have preferences, Pierrotin, it isn’t right.” “Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals,” said Georges. “Oh! be easy,” said Pere Leger; “we are sure to get to La Chapelle by mid-day,”--La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of Saint-Denis. CHAPTER IV. THE GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS CZERNI-GEORGES Those who travel in public conveyances know that the persons thus united by chance do not immediately have anything to say to one another; unless under special circumstances, conversation rarely begins until they have gone some distance. This period of silence is employed as much in mutual examination as in settling into their places. Minds need to get their equilibrium as much as bodies. When each person thinks he has discovered the age, profession, and character of his companions, the most talkative member of the company begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and forgetting its tedium. That is how things happen in French stage-coaches. In other countries customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never opening their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named Georges, is clever and lively, he is much tempted, especially under circumstances like the present, to abuse those qualities.