neighbors, particularly those of Châtel-Censoir, who were so disgusted with their patron, St. Potentian, who had not taken good care of them, that they turned him out, and tried seven others in succession, until in despair they fell back on a female of the same name, St. Potentiana. We told this, and lots of other old stories, with shouts of laughter; and to show that we were above such silly superstitions, and had no faith in the Provost’s regulations either, we went boldly down to the Chastelot gate and talked across the moat with all the vagrants assembled there. Some of us even slipped out between the angels who stood guard before our paradise,--(they did not take themselves seriously either), and shared a bottle with some of these outcasts in a nearby tavern. Need I say that I was one of the number? for naturally I could not bear the thought that the others should go swaggering, drinking and talking, and I not of the party. I met a friend out there, a farmer from Mailly-le-Château, and we had a drink together. He was a jolly old bird with a round red face fairly shining with health and good cheer, and he was even more boastful about the plague than I was, pooh-poohing the whole thing and declaring that it was all an invention of the doctors and that people died of fear, and not of the pestilence; said he, “I’ll tell you the best remedy I know for it, and I won’t charge you anything either!” “Be sure and warm your feet; Be careful what you eat; Be shy of woman’s charm, And you are safe from harm.” We sat there with our heads together for an hour or more; he had a trick of poking you in the ribs, or slapping you on the back or the leg, which I did not notice much at the time, but you may believe I thought of it afterwards, when the next morning one of my apprentices told me that old farmer Grattepain was dead! It made the cold shivers go down my back, and in my heart I gave myself up for lost, but I went back to the shop and fussed about a little, though I was hardly conscious of what I was about, and kept saying to myself, “You have done for yourself now, you old idiot.” Still, in our part of the world we don’t waste time over what we ought to have done the day before yesterday, we just take hold and do what we can at the present moment; so I resolved to keep the enemy at bay as long as I was able, telling myself that I still had a good fighting chance. The idea of consulting a doctor occurred to me (going to St. Cosmo’s shop, as we call it), but in spite of the trouble I was in, I had enough self-control not to do it, for, as I said to myself, doctors really know no more than we do, they will only take my fee, and send me to the pest-house, and there I shall catch the plague and no mistake; no, so long as I have my wits about me, I will ask help of no man; dying is, after all, a lonely business, and as the saying goes, “In spite of every drug and leech, we live until Death’s door we reach.”