By-and-by the _aubergiste_ came to conduct us to table. As we went thither, Crépin stopped, took the girl by the chin, and looked into her wet inflamed eyes. If the prospect of good fare exhilarated him, I will say, also, for his credit, that I believe he had a kindly nature. “For the future,” he said, “be discreet and make a study to command your nerves. In these days one must look on life through the little window of the _lunette_.” We found our forestaller (who, by the way, had returned no answer to Crépin’s polite message) established in the eating-room when we entered it. He was a coarse, blotched ruffian, thick and overbearing, and he stared at us insolently as he lay sprawled over a couple of chairs. “So, thou wouldst share my supper?” he cried, in a rumbling, vibrant voice. “Lie down under the table, citizen, and thou shalt have a big plate of scraps when once my belly is satisfied.” Crépin paused near the threshold. I tingled with secret laughter to watch the bludgeoning of these two parvenus. But my respected chief had the advantage of an acquired courtesy. “You honour me beyond my expectations,” he said. “But, if I were to break the dish over the citizen’s face, the scraps would fall the sooner.” The other scrambled to his feet with a furious grimace. “_Canaille!_” he shouted (it was curious that I never heard an upstart but would apply this term in a quarrel to those of his own kidney)--“Scum! pigwash! Do you know my name, my office, my reputation? God’s-blood! I’ve a mind to have you roasted in a fat hog’s skin and served for the first course!” Crépin walked up to the bully very coolly. _M. le Représentant_ had plenty of courage in the ordinary affairs of life. “Do I know who you are?” he said. “Why, I take you for one of those curs that are whipt on to do the dirty work of the people’s ministers. And do you know who I am, citizen spy? I hold my commission direct from the Committee of Safety, with full authority of sequestration and requisition, and no tittle of responsibility to your masters at La Réole. If you interfere with the processes of my office, I shall have something additional to say in my report to the chiefs of my department, whom your highness may recognise by the names of Billaud-Varennes and Collot-d’Herbois. If you insult me personally, I shall thrash you with a dog-whip.” The creature was but a huge wind-bag. I never saw one collapse so suddenly. Crépin, it is true, had some fearful names to conjure by. “_M. le Représentant_,” said the former, in a fallen, flabby voice, “I have no desire to oppose or embarrass you. We need not clash if I am circumspect. For the rest, accept my apologies for the heat I was betrayed into through inadvertence. We have to be so careful with strangers.”