As a man of breeding it would ill become me to set down the homely truths I thus learned.  The conversations of the vulgar are little suited to a nobleman’s memoirs; but in this I distinguish between the Duke of Sully and the king’s minister, and it is in the latter capacity that I relate what passed on these diverting occasions.  “Ho, Simon,” I would say, encouraging the poor man as he came bowing and trembling before me, “how goes it, my friend?”

“Badly,” he would answer, “very badly until your lordship came this way.”

“And how is that, little man?”

“Oh, it is the roads,” he always replied, shaking his bald head as he began to set about his business.  “The roads since your lordship became surveyor-general are so good that not one horse in a hundred casts a shoe; and then there are so few highwaymen now that not one robber’s plates do I replace in a twelvemonth.  There is where it is.”

At this I was highly delighted.

“Still, since I began to pass this way times have not been so bad with you, Simon,” I would answer.

Thereto he had one invariable reply.

“No; thanks to Ste. Genevieve and your lordship, whom we call in this village the poor man’s friend, I have a fowl in the pot.”

This phrase so pleased me that I repeated it to the king.  It tickled his fancy also, and for some years it was a very common remark of that good and great ruler, that he hoped to live to see every peasant with a fowl in his pot.

“But why,” I remember I once asked this honest fellow—­it was on the last occasion of the sorrel falling lame there—­“do you thank Ste. Genevieve?”

“She is my patron saint,” he answered.

“Then you are a Parisian?”

“Your lordship is always right.”

“But does her saintship do you any good?” I asked curiously.

“Certainly, by your lordship’s leave.  My wife prays to her and she loosens the nails in the sorrel’s shoes.”

“In fact she pays off an old grudge,” I answered, “for there was a time when Paris liked me little; but hark ye, master smith, I am not sure that this is not an act of treason to conspire with Madame Genevieve against the comfort of the king’s minister.  What think you, you rascal; can you pass the justice elm without a shiver?”

This threw the simple fellow into a great fear, which the sight of the livre of gold speedily converted into joy as stupendous.  Leaving him still staring at his fortune I rode away; but when we had gone some little distance, the aspect of his face, when I charged him with treason, or my own unassisted discrimination suggested a clew to the phenomenon.

“La Trape,” I said to my valet—­the same who was with me at Cahors—­“what is the name of the innkeeper at Poissy, at whose house we are accustomed to dine?”

“Andrew, may it please your lordship.”

“Andrew!  I thought so!” I exclaimed, smiting my thigh.  “Simon and Andrew his brother!  Answer, knave, and, if you have permitted me to be robbed these many times, tremble for your ears.  Is he not brother to the smith at Aubergenville who has just shod my horse?”