"There is no longer a king.... Come, come. Quicker, quicker!" "Let us climb the rise first, and then we will see about that." So we climbed the rise, and then old Levasseur put his horses to the trot. "Oh! Levasseur, this won't do at all," I said. "How, then, do you want me to go?" "Faster." "Faster? It is forbidden." "Forbidden by whom?" "By the rules, deuce take it! I know my business, you bet!" "Look here, Levasseur ..." "What is it?" "Let me get down." "Ooh!... ooh!" The carriage stopped; I got out, and I cut a branch from an elm by the roadside. "Look here," he said, looking on with great uneasiness, "you are not cutting off that switch to whip my horses with, I hope?" "Make yourself easy on that score, Levasseur," I said, as I got back into the carriage. "Go on!" "It is all very well to say go on; but have you cut that stick to beat my horses with is what I want to know?" "All right, we shall see about that." "Oh! we shall see about that, shall we? I'm not afraid of you because you have a gun." "Look here, Levasseur, you know your business as a postillion, don't you?" "Rather." "Well, then, I too know mine as a traveller.... Your notion, it would seem, is to go as slowly as possible, while mine is to go as fast as I can. We will see which of us is the stronger." "We will see whatever you like, I don't care." I drew out my watch. "You have two minutes in which to make up your mind." "What to do?" "To put your horses to the gallop." "And if I won't?" "If not, I shall do so myself." "You mean it?" "Certainly!" "Well, I shall like to see the fun." "You shall, Levasseur, take my word for it." He began to strike up the lament of Saint Roch. While all this was taking place we had been going at a slow trot. "Look here, Levasseur," I said, at the end of the first couplet, "I warn you that one minute has gone already." Levasseur began intoning the second at the top of his voice; but just as he was going to begin the third I gave his horses a sound whack across their quarters with the stick. They made a leap forward and set off at full trot. "Now, now, what are you doing?" asked the postillion. Instead of replying, I redoubled my blows and thrashed the horses into a gallop. "Oh! curse it, curse it, is that what you mean? Let me get down for a second and you shall see, indeed! Ah! you will have to settle with me. Wo! wo! Good heavens, will you stop it?" "What! stop it, Levasseur?" I shouted, continuing to beat with all the strength in my arms, "when I tell you that I know my business better than you know yours!" "Once more, will you have done?... No?... Wo! wo! wo!" It was in vain he cried "Wo!" or reined in his horses; they reared, but galloped all the same. Unluckily, my elm branch broke and I was disarmed. But the horses were so well started that he did not manage to pull them up for a hundred yards.