The important personage just described was the _garde-champêtre_--or _garde-village_, as he was more frequently called--a sort of police officer placed by Napoleon in every village of his empire. I never could ascertain precisely the position and duties of these people; they seemed to be chief police officers, and the _maires_ paid them great deference, seldom acting in extraordinary cases without their advice and concurrence. They acted as gamekeepers and constables, billeted troops, and exercised a general surveillance in the commune. No doubt they noted and made reports of all they saw and heard, so that H. I. Majesty had an authorised spy in every village. They were well paid, and the situation appeared to be a comfortable retreat for old soldiers, for such we always found them to be. Our present friend (called familiarly by the peasantry Petit Jean) had served in a regiment of the line under Marshal Suchet in Catalonia, and although still only a middle-aged man, had been pensioned on account of having lost two fingers of his left hand, and placed here for life as _garde-village_. Well, the whole cortège has entered the room, and ranged themselves in line across the lower end of it, close to the wall; the shuffling of feet has ceased, and a profound silence prevails. We sit staring at them, and wondering what the deuce they interrupt us for. Bowing and scraping renewed spontaneously; again silence, but various glances are shot at and signs made to Mynheer Evenpoel, which in his fright he utterly disregards, and stands like an owl, without a movement except the evident shaking of his limbs. After a while old Ingleby, who had been leaning over the back of his chair eyeing the poor devil, utters in his usual gruff Yorkshire way, “_Well, sir?_” without reflecting on the fact of his English not being understood. The tone is enough, however, and it determines the party to bolder measures--the quaking magnate is actually shoved forward to the table. Petit Jean also advances, and again places himself at the poor man’s elbow; his right arm, outstretched, bears upon the upright javelin, the butt of which he plants firmly, and with an air, on the floor; in his mutilated left hand he holds up to us an unfolded sheet of foolscap, which we soon ascertain to be inscribed by certain characters calculated to extract hay and corn, &c., from the lofts and granaries of our clients--in short, the requisition for forage and provisions, &c., of our quartermaster-general addressed to the commune of Strytem. The brown little warrior looks complacently round the company as though he would say, “And I also am a soldier; _Moi!_” After repeated applications of a very scanty blue cotton handkerchief to his front--_pour essuyer la sueur_--the worthy magistrate at length, in a trembling, hesitating voice, opens his oration, gains courage as he goes on, warms, and even becomes rather energetic towards the conclusion of nearly a quarter of an hour’s talk, to which we