in 1799, my step-father, Monsieur Yung, a purveyor.  But my mother is dead, and I have quarrelled with my step-father, who, between ourselves, is a blackguard; he is still alive, but I never see him.  That’s why, in despair, left all to myself, I went off to the wars as a private in 1813.  Well, to go back to the time I returned to Greece; you wouldn’t believe with what joy old Ali Tebelen received the grandson of Czerni-Georges.  Here, of course, I call myself simply Georges.  The pacha gave me a harem—­”

“You have had a harem?” said Oscar.

“Were you a pacha with many tails?” asked Mistigris.

“How is it that you don’t know,” replied Georges, “that only the Sultan makes pachas, and that my friend Tebelen (for we were as friendly as Bourbons) was in rebellion against the Padishah!  You know, or you don’t know, that the true title of the Grand Seignior is Padishah, and not Sultan or Grand Turk.  You needn’t think that a harem is much of a thing; you might as well have a herd of goats.  The women are horribly stupid down there; I much prefer the grisettes of the Chaumieres at Mont-Parnasse.”

“They are nearer, at any rate,” said the count.

“The women of the harem couldn’t speak a word of French, and that language is indispensable for talking.  Ali gave me five legitimate wives and ten slaves; that’s equivalent to having none at all at Janina.  In the East, you must know, it is thought very bad style to have wives and women.  They have them, just as we have Voltaire and Rousseau; but who ever opens his Voltaire or his Rousseau?  Nobody.  But, for all that, the highest style is to be jealous.  They sew a woman up in a sack and fling her into the water on the slightest suspicion,—­that’s according to their Code.”

“Did you fling any in?” asked the farmer.

“I, a Frenchman! for shame!  I loved them.”

Whereupon Georges twirled and twisted his moustache with a dreamy air.

They were now entering Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin presently drew up before the door of a tavern where were sold the famous cheese-cakes of that place.  All the travellers got out.  Puzzled by the apparent truth mingled with Georges’ inventions, the count returned to the coucou when the others had entered the house, and looked beneath the cushion for the portfolio which Pierrotin told him that enigmatical youth had placed there.  On it he read the words in gilt letters:  “Maitre Crottat, notary.”  The count at once opened it, and fearing, with some reason, that Pere Leger might be seized with the same curiosity, he took out the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, put it into his coat pocket, and entered the inn to keep an eye on the travellers.

“This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat’s second clerk,” thought he.  “I shall pay my compliments to his master, whose business it was to send me his head-clerk.”

From the respectful glances of Pere Leger and Oscar, Georges perceived that he had made for himself two fervent admirers.  Accordingly, he now posed as a great personage; paid for their cheese-cakes, and ordered for each a glass of Alicante.  He offered the same to Mistigris and his master, who refused with smiles; but the friend of Ali Tebelen profited by the occasion to ask the pair their names.