The little hunchback was not mistaken in his belief that the adventure of the night would bring us a crowd of curiosity seekers. The servants of the inn had risen early, in order to lose no time in telling all that they had seen and heard. The hair-dressers, the bakers, the grocers were the first to be informed; but that was quite enough to make it certain that the whole town would soon know what we were capable of doing. An adventure becomes so magnified by passing from mouth to mouth that we sometimes have difficulty in recognizing things that have happened to ourselves, when we hear others tell them. Everyone takes delight in adding some strange or marvelous detail, in outbidding his neighbor; thus it is that a brook becomes a rushing torrent, that a child who recites a complimentary poem without a mistake is a prodigy, that a juggler is a magician, that a man who has a soprano voice is a eunuch, that the man whose love is all for his country is a suspicious person in the eyes of him who loves only his own interest, and that a comet announces the end of the world. The maid-servant, when she went to buy her ounce of coffee, learned from the grocer’s clerk that there were two most extraordinary men at the Tête-Noire inn, who were endowed with the power to tell you what you had done and what you meant to do. “Pardieu! I must go and tell my mistress that,” said the maid as she left the shop; “she went to walk with her cousin the other night, and she don’t want her husband to know it; I’ll tell her not to go and let those sorcerers get scent of it.” “What’s the news?” the old bachelor asked the barber, as he took his seat in the chair and put on his towel. “What news, Monsieur Sauvageon! Peste! we have some very peculiar, very interesting people in town!” “Tell me about them, my friend; go on!” “Those two strangers, those doctors who arrived at the Tête-Noire last night, have been making experiments already.” “Indeed?” “It’s an absolute fact; I got it from Jérôme, the servant at the inn, who saw it and heard it.” “The devil.” “The somnambulist began his nocturnal expeditions last night.” “Nocturnal expeditions at night! Are these somnambulists nyctalopes?” “Yes, monsieur, they’re nycta--What do you call it, Monsieur Sauvageon?” “Nyctalopes, my friend.” “They’re nyctalopes, for sure.--What does nyctalopes mean?” “It means that they see in the dark.” “Oh! I understand! they’re like cats; in fact, somnambulists are as smart as cats in the dark.--But to return to this one at the Tête-Noire, you must know that he tells everything anybody’s done; and last night he discovered something that was hidden from all eyes!” “I understand! he discovered some intrigue.”[B] [B] _Le pot aux roses_; lit. the jar of roses. “Well, not exactly that! His companion had a pain in the night--he was doubled up with colic caused by his supper.”