“Oh, this time,” I said, “I shall not play the coward.  The cloak has cured me of my fear of ghosts; and I should not advise any one to meddle with me.”

The hildago was obliged to leave me alone.  I loaded my pistols and put them on the table within reach of my hand; but these precautions were a pure waste of time; nothing disturbed the silence of the room, and the heavy red silk curtains, with their coat of arms at the corners in tarnished silver, were not stirred by the slightest breath.  Marcasse returned and, delighted at finding me as cheerful as he had left me, began preparing our supper with as much care as if we had come to Roche-Mauprat for the sole purpose of making a good meal.  He made jokes about the capon which was still singing on the spit, and about the wine which was so like a brush in the throat.  His good humour increased when the tenant appeared, bringing a few bottles of excellent Madeira, which had been left with him by the chevalier, who liked to drink a glass or two before setting foot in the stirrup.  In return we invited the worthy man to sup with us, as the least tedious way of discussing business matters.

“Good,” he said; “it will be like old times when the peasants used to eat at the table of the seigneurs of Roche-Mauprat.  You are doing the same, Monsieur Bernard, you are quite right.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied very coldly; “only I behave thus with those who owe me money, not those to whom I owe it.”

This reply, and the word “sir,” frightened him so much that he was at great pains to excuse himself from sitting down to table.  However, I insisted, as I wished to give him the measure of my character at once.  I treated him as a man I was raising to my own level, not as one to whom I wished to descend.  I forced him to be cleanly in his jokes, but allowed him to be free and facetious within the limits of decent mirth.  He was a frank, jovial man.  I questioned him minutely to discover if he was not in league with the phantom who was in the habit of leaving his cloak upon the bed.  This, however, seemed far from probable; the man evidently had such an aversion for the Hamstringers, that, had not a regard for my relationship held him back, he would have been only too glad to have given them such a dressing in my presence as they deserved.  But I could not allow him any license on this point; so I requested him to give me an account of my property, which he did with intelligence, accuracy, and honesty.

As he withdrew I noticed that the Madeira had had considerable effect on him; he seemed to have no control over his legs, which kept catching in the furniture; and yet he had been in sufficient possession of his faculties to reason correctly.  I have always observed that wine acts much more powerfully on the muscles of peasants than on their nerves; that they rarely lose their heads, and that, on the contrary, stimulants produce in them a bliss unknown to us; the pleasure they derive from drunkenness is quite different from ours and very superior to our febrile exaltation.