"You can see for yourselves, my friends," he said, as he showed the peacock's feather to his assailants, "you can see for yourselves I do not want to harm you." No one could have resisted such artlessness. Threats gave way to shouts of laughter, masks fell off, and, when they had given Hiraux's legs time to recover their stability, all three returned amicably to the town. Hiraux added one more adventure to his record. Hiraux made me laugh so much in my childhood, and I loved him so dearly, that my sympathy for the musician overcame my antipathy to music and I agreed to take violin lessons. But I insisted that they should buy me a violin in Paris, and not one of those for sale in the old curiosity shops of Villers-Cotterets, which did not satisfy my pride as good enough. My mother always let me go my own way; so it was decided that Hiraux should buy me a violin the next time he went to Paris, and that my musical education should begin on his return. Only, when would that journey be likely to take place? It looked at first as though I had counted on a postponement to the Greek Kalends. But such was not to be: chance, or rather a new joke, of which Hiraux was the victim, decreed otherwise. The journey to Paris was arranged at the close of a dinner, at which Hiraux and some friends of his were present--among others were his two intimate friends, Mussart and Duez, whose names we mention now as we shall hear of them again presently. It was settled under the drollest of conditions. They were dining at the house of a man named Hutin, where all the diligences stop on their way between Laon and Paris. They made Hiraux so tipsy that he neither knew what he was doing, nor what was done to him. They undressed him and, with only his drawers and shirt on, they bundled him under the box of the diligence, among the trunks, portmanteaus and hat-boxes. Of course they did not leave a single farthing on him--where would the fun have been if Hiraux had had money? Hiraux came to his senses in Paris. The conductor was completely ignorant of the joke, and was therefore quite as astonished to find Hiraux there as Hiraux was himself. Hiraux was greatly embarrassed at first at finding himself dressed only in his shirt and pants, in the courtyard among all the diligences; but, being a man of resource, he bethought him of a nephew, named Camusat,--a good, excellent fellow, who has since been and still is my friend. He called a cab, got in, and cried out through the top:-- "To M. Camusat at the Rapée!" Hiraux remembered his nephew's address, so he was able to drive straight there: I am sure I should have been too much embarrassed to have remembered it, in like circumstances. Camusat was long and thin like his uncle; he provided him with coat, trousers and waistcoat; then he lent him twenty francs to buy me a violin and fifteen francs for the return journey.