"See these two beggars," he exclaimed, "pretending to patriotism! They have no energy, no courage, no civism. Why, _you_ might have remained for a twelvemonth under their very nostrils before they would have found you out. Gilet is the man for the service of his country." Merely to stop the torrent of his complainings, I asked him some vague questions relative to the nobleman whom I was now following to Paris. But the patriot was not to be moved from his topic. "Hah! Citizen Lanfranc. All is over with him. He once held his head high enough, but it will soon be as low as ever it was high. Yet I could have forgiven his aristocracy, if he had not put these two 'chiens' above me." The position in which the mayor and his deputy sat, on the box of the chaise, continually presenting them to the eye of my companion, kept his choler peculiarly active. "One of these fellows," he exclaimed, "was the Marquis's cook, another his perruquier! _I_ was his tailor. Every man of taste and talent knows the superiority of _my_ profession; for what is the first of noblemen without elegance of costume, or what indeed would man himself be without my art, the noblest and the earliest art of mankind? And yet he made these two 'brigands' mayor and deputy--_peste_! I did my duty. I denounced him on the spot. I did more. The aristocrat had a faction in the town. It was filled with his dependents. In fact, it had been built on his grounds, and tenanted by the old hangers-on of the family. So, to make a clear stage, I denounced the town." He clapped his hands with exultation at this civic triumph.