"You have heard of me?" "From M. Gringuet?" I said very loudly. "Yes," he answered in a similar tone; for, aware that deaf persons cannot hear their own voices and are seldom able to judge how loudly they are speaking, I had led him to this. "And I suppose that you will do as he did?" "How?" I asked. "In what way?" He touched his pocket with a stealthy gesture, unseen by the people behind him. Again I made a sign as if I could not hear. "Take the usual little gift?" he said, finding himself compelled to speak. "I cannot hear a word," I bellowed. By this time the crowd were shaking with laughter. "Accept the usual gift?" he said, his fat, pale face perspiring, and his little pig's eyes regarding me balefully. "And let you pay one quarter?" I said. "Yes," he answered. But this, and the simplicity with which he said it, drew so loud a roar of laughter from the crowd as penetrated even to his dulled senses. Turning abruptly, as if a bee had stung him, he found the place convulsed with merriment; and perceiving, in an instant, that I had played upon him, though he could not understand how or why, he glared about him a moment, muttered something which I could not catch, and staggered away with the gait of a drunken man. After this, it was useless to suppose that I could amuse myself with others. The crowd, which had never dreamed of such a tax-collector, and could scarcely believe either eyes or ears, hesitated to come forward even to pay; and I was considering what I should do next, when a commotion in one corner of the square drew my eyes to that quarter. I looked and saw at first only Curtin. Then, the crowd dividing and making way for him, I perceived that he had the real Gringuet with him--Gringuet, who rode through the market with an air of grim majesty, with one foot in a huge slipper and eyes glaring with ill-temper. Doubtless Curtin, going to him on the chance of hearing something of the rogue who had cheated him, had apprised the tax-collector of the whole matter; for on seeing me in my chair of state, he merely grinned in a vicious way, and cried to the nearest not to let me escape. "We have lost one rogue, but we will hang the other," he said. And while the townsfolk stood dumbfounded round us, he slipped with a groan from his horse, and bade his two servants seize me. "And do you," he called to the host, "see that you help, my man! You have harboured him, and you shall pay for it if he escapes." With that he hopped a step nearer; and then, not dreaming of resistance, sank with another groan--for his foot was immensely swollen by the journey--into the chair from which I had risen.