"A servant, Monsieur." "Whose?" But he muttered that he did not know; and I did not press him. He assisted me to change my dress; when I had done, he asked me at what hour I needed the horses. "The horses! For what?" I said, turning and staring at him. "To return, Monsieur." "But I do not return to-day!" I said in cold displeasure. "Of what are you speaking? We came only yesterday." "True, Monsieur," he muttered, continuing to potter over my dressing things, and keeping his back to me. "Still, it is a good day for returning." "You have been reading this note!" I cried wrathfully. "Who told you that----" "All the town knows!" he answered, shrugging his shoulders coolly. "It is, 'André, take your master home!' and, 'André, you have a hot-pate for a master,' and André this, and André that, until I am fairly muddled! Gil has a bloody nose, fighting a Harincourt lad that called Monsieur a fool; but for me, I am too old for fighting. And there is one other thing I am too old for," he continued, with a sniff. "What is that, impertinent?" I cried. "To bury another master." I waited a minute. Then I said: "You think that I shall be killed?" "It is the talk of the town!" I thought a moment. Then: "You served my father, André," I said. "Ah! Monsieur." "Yet you would have me run away?" He turned to me, and flung up his hands in despair. "_Mon Dieu!_" he cried, "I don't know what I would have! We are ruined by these _canaille_. As if God made them to do anything but dig and work; or we could do without poor! If you had never taken up with them, Monsieur----" "Silence, man!" I said sternly. "You know nothing about it. Go down now, and another time be more careful. You talk of the _canaille_ and the poor! What are you yourself?" "I, Monsieur?" he cried, in astonishment. "Yes--you!" He stared at me a moment with a face of bewilderment. Then slowly and sorrowfully he shook his head, and went out. He began to think me mad.