“Does high birth go bail for breaches of the law in your country?”

“In my country men of high birth do not condescend to take dishonourable employments.”

“No service under the king can be dishonourable.”

“The hangman would say the same thing.”

“Take care what you say.”

“Take care what you do.  Know, sir, that I am a free man who has been grievously outraged, and know, too, that I fear no one.  Throw me out of the window, if you dare.”

“Sir,” said a lady to me in the voice of the mistress of the house, “in my house there is no throwing out of windows.”

“Madam, an angry man makes use of terms which his better reason disowns.  I am wronged by a most cruel act of injustice, and I humbly crave your pardon for having offended you.  Please to reflect that for the first time in my life I have been oppressed and insulted, and that in a kingdom where I thought myself safe from all but highway robbers.  For them I have my pistols, and for the worthy superintendents I have a passport, but I find the latter useless.  For the sake of seven ounces of snuff which I bought at St. Omer three weeks ago, this gentleman robs me and interrupts my journey, though the king’s majesty is my surety that no one shall interfere with me; he calls on me to pay fifty louis, he delivers me to the rage of his impudent menials and to the derision of the mob, from whom I had to rid myself by my money and the aid of this worthy man beside me.  I am treated like a scoundrel, and the man who should have been my defender and deliverer slinks away and hides himself, and adds to the insults I have received.  His myrmidons have turned my clothes upside down, and pitchforked my linen at the foot of the town gates, to revenge themselves on me for not giving them twenty, four sous.  To-morrow the manner in which I have been treated will be known to the diplomatic bodies at Versailles and Paris, and in a few days it will be in all the newspapers.  I will pay not a farthing because I owe not a farthing.  Now, sir, am I to send a courier to the Duc de Gesvres?”

“What you have got to do is to pay, and if you do not care to pay, you may do whatever you like.”

“Then, ladies and gentlemen, good-bye.  As for you, sir, we shall meet again.”

As I was rushing out of the room like a madman, I heard somebody calling out to me in good Italian to wait a minute.  I turned round, and saw the voice had proceeded from a man past middle age, who addressed the superintendent thus:—­

“Let this gentleman proceed on his journey; I will go bail for him.  Do you understand me, superintendent?  I will be his surety.  You don’t know these Italians.  I went through the whole of the last war in Italy, and I understand the national character.  Besides, I think the gentleman is in the right.”

“Very good,” said the official, turning to me.  “All you have to do is to pay a matter of thirty or forty francs at the customs’ office as the affair is already booked.”