"Hold your tongue, and when my goddess arrives, serve her on your knees," said Macabre with a fatuous smile in which his crooked mouth extended to his left eye. Then, recurring to his fixed idea, which was to feast bountifully and regale his goddess handsomely, he insisted that the inn-keeper should be made to get up. "By hell!" exclaimed Saccage, drawing his sword, "there is no difficulty about that; I have always heard that you must grease stiff joints to make them work, and I will find a way to unearth this pretended dying man whatever hole he may be hiding in! Come with me, scouts! and run your swords everywhere, whether it's into flesh or marrow." "That is unnecessary," said Mario, jumping in front of the unsheathed sword; "I will go and bring him; I know where Master Pignoux is! I know him, and when I tell him that he has the honor of receiving Captain Macabre in person, he will come at once." "That is a pretty boy!" said Macabre, looking after Mario as he left the room. "I must give him to my wife to wait on her. She asks me every day for a trim little page." "You will make nothing of a gypsy," said Saccage. "This imp has an impudent, sneering air." "You are mistaken! I consider him very pretty myself!" rejoined the captain, who did not enjoy being contradicted too much, and with whom the lieutenant had been a little too outspoken for several days past, for reasons which we shall soon learn, and which Macabre was beginning to suspect. The marquis, being anxious about Mario, was standing in a small passageway near the _salle d'honneur_ and doing his utmost to hear everything; but his ear grasped only snatches of the conversation, and Mario, hurrying out in search of him, hastily told him what had taken place, in as few words as possible. He had not time, nor indeed had he the inclination, to tell what was happening at Briantes; he felt that the marquis already had enough upon his mind to extricate himself from his present plight, and that he ought not to disturb him by giving him other motives for apprehension. The _reitres_ being as ignorant as he of the attack precipitated by the gypsies, there was no risk that the marquis would learn it from another mouth than his when the proper moment should arrive. But would that moment arrive? The present situation would have seemed desperate to an experienced person, and the marquis, who knew only a part of it, deemed it very serious. But Mario had the happy faith of childhood: he saw only half of the danger. "If we escape from here, as I hope," he thought, "my father and I will have a hearty laugh at the figure we cut at this moment!" [Footnote 8: The _reitres_ were still called _lansquenets_ in France, although they no longer carried lances.] LIII In truth, the poor marquis, disguised as a cook, was very laughable. He had done the work conscientiously. He had taken off his wig and concealed his bare skull beneath an oilcloth cap shaped like a cake-mould.