“And do you know the new apprentice?”

“No:  some stranger, evidently.”

[Illustration:  The crooked man.]

“It is not hard to guess his extraction,” said one of our dinner-party.  “In the East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each eye.  For his part, he seems to be braced with two pans in each knee.  He is long in the stilts like a heron, square—­headed and square-shouldered:  I give you my word he is a Scotchman.  For certain,” he added, “I have seen his likeness somewhere—­Ah yes, in an engraving of Hogarth’s!”

The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked gentleman, at whose side I had dined—­a man of sharpness and wit, for which his hunch gave him the authority.  As we penetrated finally into the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with iron railways for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by heavy wagons and Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding wonders was distracted by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the unfortunate red nose.

[Illustration:  The gravity road]

The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful exploding noise.  I should have thought that a hundred drummers were marching through the catacombs.

Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the wine-frames, came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O’Shanter.  At a new outburst of resonant noises, which we could not help offering to the general confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed twice or thrice the attitude of a gymnast who walks on his hands.  The figure of the man, still rigid, flew up into the air like a stick that pops out of the water.  The Terrible Brothers received him in their arms.

Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced in the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and the barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined tramway.  His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with indignation and horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his eyes flew off, and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a rate of speed continually increasing.

He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion arose among ourselves.  Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers quite disheveled with laughter, said, “Fellows, we had better stop somewhere.  There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see in the role of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain we are wanted.  I always knew there was a Society of Pure Illumination at Epernay.  It is not a Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes, its grips, and in a word its secret.  I have recognized among these gentlemen some active members of the order—­among others, notwithstanding his disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here, Fortnoye.”