"Aha! my rascal! so you presume to offer a plume to my daughter, do you? And you dare to ask her father to be your messenger? Ten thousand cannon balls! this passes all bounds! It was probably you who prowled about this street so much that it made the neighbors gossip!" "Master Landry, I live on this street, it is true; but I have never prowled about your----" "Enough! enough! you impertinent rascal! coming to ask a father to take charge of a present intended to seduce his daughter!" "Why, not at all! you are off the track, my good Landry; I have no such purpose." "Ah! you take me for one of those half-witted or obliging fathers who shut their eyes to such manœuvres! I am going to show you how I receive gallants who would like to talk nonsense to my daughter!--Here, you blackguard, here is the price of your gift!" As he spoke, the bath keeper planted his foot in Plumard's short-clothes, and repeated the movement several times, running after the young clerk, who fled, yelling at the top of his voice. Satisfied with the chastisement he had administered to the man whom he believed to be in love with his daughter, Landry returned to his house and locked the door. As for the ill-fated Plumard, he hastened to his lodgings, holding his hand to the portion of his frame that had been so roughly treated by the bath keeper, and saying to himself: "I should have done as well to execute my commission without making any change in the text, without diverging from my instructions!--What a brutal wretch that bath keeper is! He thinks now that I am in love with his daughter! I shall not dare to pass his door--I shall have to move.--However, if the pomade has the virtue that Bahuchet attributes to it, I shall find some consolation for my late disagreeable experience. I shall be so handsome with plenty of hair! I will go about bareheaded, I will carry my cap in my hand all the time!" * * * * * These typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber: Collége Saint-Denis=>Collège Saint-Denis this underaking, do not pity me=>this undertaking, do not pity me Turlupin and Gautier-Garguille=>Turlupin and Gauthier-Garguille End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bath Keepers, v.1 (Novels of Paul de Kock Volume VII), by Charles Paul de Kock