“The pity is,” said he, “that these city magistrates are gentlemen of the long robe, and not cooks, and that they hold their magistracy from the king, and not from the tradesmen, notably not from the corporation of Parisian cooks of which I am the banner-bearer. If they were of my choosing they would abolish tithes and the salt tax, and we should all be happy.... At any rate, if the world does not walk backwards like a crab, a day will come when magistrates will be elected by the tradesmen.” “No doubt,” said Monsieur l’Abbé, “magistrates will one day be elected by the masters and their apprentices.” “Mind what you are saying, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said my father anxiously, and drawing his brows together. “When apprentices mix themselves up with the election of magistrates all will be lost. In the days when I was apprenticed I thought of nothing but of misappropriating my master’s wife and goods. But since I own a shop and a wife I attend to the public interest, in which my own is bound up.” Lesturgeon, our landlord, brought a jug of wine. He was a small, red-haired man, quick, and rough. “You speak of the new magistrates,” he said, his hands on his hips, “I only wish them as much wisdom as the old ones, who were nevertheless not very knowing about the public welfare. But they were beginning to learn their business. You know, Monsieur Léonard (he spoke to my father), the school where the children of the Rue St. Jacques go to learn their alphabet, is built of wood, and a slow match and a few shavings would suffice to make it blaze like a veritable midsummer night’s bonfire. I warned the gentlemen of the Hôtel de Ville about it. My letter did not err in style for I had it written for sixpence by a scrivener who has a stall under the Val-de-Grace. I represented to the magistrate that all the small boys of the neighbourhood were in daily danger of being grilled, like chitterlings, which was a matter for thought, having regard to the sensibility of mothers. The magistrate who has to do with the schools answered politely, after a year had elapsed, that the danger run by the small boys of the Rue St. Jacques roused all his solicitude, and that he was eager to remove it, and, in consequence he was sending a fire-engine to the afore-mentioned pupils. ‘The king,’ he added, ‘having in his goodness built a fountain in commemoration of his victories, at two hundred paces from the school, water would not be lacking, and the children will learn in a few days to manage the engine which the town consents to grant them free.’ “On reading this letter I jumped to the ceiling. And returning to Val-de-Grace I dictated a reply to the scrivener as follows: “‘Honoured City-magistrate—Sir, in the schoolhouse of the Rue St. Jacques are two hundred youngsters, of whom the oldest is but seven years of age. These are fine firemen, sir, to work your fire-engine. Take it back again, and have a schoolhouse built of stone and rubble.’