The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked the wind out of him.  He leaned panting against the wall.  As he scanned M. Etienne’s open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.

“It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern,” he said with asperity.  “The municipality should forbid it.  I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting.”

“Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?” M. Etienne asked with immense respect.

“I have that honour, monsieur,” the little man replied, delighted to impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.

“Oh,” said M. Etienne, with increasing solemnity, “perhaps monsieur had a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?”

The little man began to look uneasy.

“There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day,” he stammered.

“A rebellious and contumacious decree,” M. Etienne rejoined, “most offensive to the general-duke.”  Whereupon he fingered his sword.

“Monsieur,” the little deputy cried, “we meant no offence to his Grace, or to any true Frenchman.  We but desire peace after all these years of blood.  We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that even he will come to see the matter in a different light—­”

“You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne,” M. Etienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the street to make sure the coast was clear.  The wretched little deputy’s teeth chattered.

The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he seemed on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate.  I thought it would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble home in the dark, so I growled out to the fellow: 

“Stir one step at your peril!”

I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not; he only sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding deference.  He knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the scabbard.

The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Etienne’s example, but there was no help to be seen or heard.  He turned to his tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay.

“Monsieur, beware what you do.  I am Pierre Marceau!”

“Oh, you are Pierre Marceau?  And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?”

“I am not faring forth; I am faring home.  I—­we had a little con—­that is, not to say a conference, but merely a little discussion on matters of no importance—­”

“I have the pleasure,” interrupted M. Etienne, sternly, “of knowing where M. Marceau lives.  M. Marceau’s errand in this direction is not accounted for.”

“But I was going home—­on my sacred honour I was!  Ask Jacques, else.  But as we went down the Rue de l’Eveque we saw two men in front of us.  As they reached the wall by M. de Mirabeau’s garden a gang of footpads fell on them.  The two drew blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians were a dozen—­a score.  We ran for our lives.”