Our host had time enough to recover his temper before this long story was finished; and judging that he had been alarmed without cause, he thought proper to commence playing another character, and interrupted the muleteer every moment, while his story was telling, by--_Holy Virgin! Great God of Heaven!_ and other such exclamations, which made the house to ring again, and which were accompanied by the most hypocritical grimaces. “May God punish,” said he, when the muleteer had done speaking, “all who do not perform their duty!” As his duty was to thieve, and he could not be accused of neglecting it, he did not appear to consider himself at all concerned in this imprecation. After this he continued silent for some time, walking up and down the room; but suddenly breaking forth with a thundering voice, “How is it possible,” cried he, “that the earth hath not yet opened itself to swallow up that house, and the wretched woman that keeps it? I have never met with any traveller yet but complained both of her and her provisions: not a passenger goes out of her doors but curses her, and makes oath never to stop at her inn again. If the officers of justice, whose duty it is to put a stop to her practices, suffer her to go on without notice, they know very well what they are about. Good God! in what times do we live!” Here this honest man sighed deeply and kept silent, to give us to understand that he thought more than he chose to say, and I was in hopes that he would not have annoyed us any longer in this manner; but I was much mistaken. He went on again more violently than before upon the old woman’s knavery, in an harangue which occupied a long half hour; after which, he finished by saying, “I return a thousand thanks to Heaven, that I bear no resemblance to that cursed old hag, and that I am a man of probity and honour, that I may hold up my head in any part of the world, without fearing the least reproach from any man. Poor as I am, nothing of that sort goes on in my house; every thing, thank God, is here sold for what it really is, and not a cat for a hare, nor a sheep for a lamb. Let no one give up his mind to cheating others, for he only cheats himself in the end. He who deals ill must expect ill treatment in return.”