So I have only to tell you this: that at the moment when the story I am about to tell you begins it is noon, that it is May, that the highway we are going to enter is bordered on the right with furze bushes, on the left by the sea; you know at once all that I have not told you; that is to say, that the bushes are green, that the sea is murmuring, that the sky is blue, that the sun is warm, and that there is dust on the road. I have only to add that this highway that winds along the coast of Brittany runs from La Poterie to La Piroche; that Piroche is a village about which I know nothing, but which must be more or less like all villages, that we are in the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1418, and that two men, one older than the other, one the father of the other, both peasants, are following the highway mounted on two nags trotting along comfortably enough for two nags under the weight of two peasants. “Shall we get there in time?” said the son. “Yes, it is not to take place until two o’clock,” replied the father, “and the sun marks but a quarter after noon.” “Oh, but I am curious to see that!” “I can well believe it.” “So he will be hanged in the armor that he stole?” “Yes.” “How the devil did he get the idea of stealing armor?” “It’s not the idea that is hard to get--” “It’s the armor,” interrupted the boy, who wanted his share in making a part of that joke. “And that, too, he didn’t get.” “Was it fine armor?” “Splendid, they say, all shining with gold.” “And did they catch him as he was carrying it away?” “Yes, you know as well as I do that armor like that never goes astray without raising a great outcry; it can’t escape its proper owner all by itself.” “So, then, it was of iron?” “They woke up in the château at the noise they heard.” “And did they arrest the man?” “Not at once; they began by being afraid.” “Of course, it’s always that way that people who have been robbed begin when they are in the presence of thieves; otherwise there would be no object in being a thief.” “No, nor any pleasant excitement in being robbed! But those brave folks had no idea that it was an affair of robbery.” “Of what, then?” “Of a ghost. That wretched, most vigorous fellow was carrying the armor in front of him, holding his head at the height of the loins of said armor so effectively that he acquired gigantic proportions in the corridor where he passed. Add to this a clattering noise which the rascal made behind him, and you will appreciate the fright of the valets. But, unfortunately for him, he woke up the Seigneur of La Piroche, he who has fear of neither the dead nor the living, who easily, and all by himself, arrested the thief and handed him over, bound, to his well-deserved justice.” “And his well-deserved justice?” “The condemned man is to be hanged clothed in the armor.” “Why that clause in the sentence?”