The goose was plucked and prepared for the spit by Mme. Leonarde, while Blazius, the tyrant, and Leander busied themselves in gathering together a goodly quantity of dead wood and twigs, and laying them ready to light in a tolerably dry spot.  Scapin, with his large clasp-knife, cut a straight, strong stick, stripped off the bark for a spit, and found two stout forked branches, which he stuck firmly into the ground on each side of the fire so that they would meet over it.  A handful of dry straw from the chariot served as kindling, and they quickly had a bright blaze, over which the goose was suspended, and being duly turned and tended by Scapin, in a surprisingly short space of time began to assume a beautiful light brown hue, and send out such a savoury delicious odour that the tyrant sprang up and strode away from its immediate vicinity, declaring that if he remained near it the temptation to seize and swallow it, spit and all, would surely be too strong for him.  Blazius had fetched from the chariot a huge tin platter that usually figured in theatrical feasts, upon which the goose, done to a turn, was finally placed with all due ceremony, and a second breakfast was partaken of, which was by no means a fallacious, chimerical repast like the first.  The pedant, who was an accomplished carver, officiated in that capacity on this auspicious occasion; begging the company, as he did so, to be kind enough to excuse the unavoidable absence, which he deeply regretted, of the slices of Seville oranges that should have formed a part of the dish—­being an obligatory accessory of roast goose—­and they with charming courtesy smilingly expressed their willingness to overlook for this once such a culinary solecism.

“Now,” said Herode, when nothing remained of the goose but its well-picked bones, “we must try to decide upon what is best to be done.  Only three or four pistoles are left in the exchequer, and my office as treasurer bids fair to become a sinecure.  We have been so unfortunate as to lose two valuable members of the troupe, Zerbine and poor Matamore, rendering many of our best plays impossible for us, and at any rate we cannot give dramatic representations that would bring in much money here in the fields, where our audience would be mainly composed of crows, jackdaws, and magpies—­who could scarcely be expected to pay us very liberally for our entertainment.  With that poor, miserable, old horse there, slowly dying between the shafts of our chariot, hardly able to drag one foot after another, we cannot reasonably expect to reach Poitiers in less than two days—­if we do then—­and our situation is an unpleasantly tragic one, for we run the risk of being frozen or starved to death by the wayside; fat geese, already roasted, do not emerge from every thicket you know.”

“You state the case very clearly,” the pedant said as he paused, “and make the evil very apparent, but you don’t say a word about the remedy.”