“Why, what is the matter with the woman?” said I, “surely if I am not Francois—­which God be thanked is true—­yet I cannot look so frightful as all this would imply.”  I had not much time given me for consideration now, for before I had well deciphered the number over a door before me, the loud noise of several voices on the floor beneath attracted my attention, and the moment after the heavy tramp of feet followed, and in an instant the gallery was thronged by the men and women of the house —­waiters, hostlers, cooks, scullions, filles de chambre, mingled with gens-d’armes, peasants, and town’s people, all eagerly forcing their way up stairs; yet all on arriving at the landing-place, seemed disposed to keep at a respectful distance, and bundling themselves at one end of the corridor, while I, feelingly alive to the ridiculous appearance I made, occupied the other—­the gravity with which they seemed at first disposed to regard me soon gave way, and peal after peal of laughter broke out, and young and old, men and women, even to the most farouche gens-d’armes, all appearing incapable of controlling the desire for merriment my most singular figure inspired; and unfortunately this emotion seemed to promise no very speedy conclusion; for the jokes and witticisms made upon my appearance threatened to renew the festivities, ad libitum.

“Regardez donc ses epaules,” said one.

“Ah, mon Dieu!  Il me fait l’idee d’une grenouille aves ses jambes jaunes,” cried another.

“Il vaut son pesant de fromage pour une Vaudeville,” said the director of the strolling theatre of the place.

“I’ll give seventy francs a week, ‘d’appointment,’ and ‘Scribe’ shall write a piece express for himself, if he’ll take it.”

“May the devil fly away with your grinning baboon faces,” said I, as I rushed up the stairs again, pursued by the mob at full cry; scarcely, however, had I reached the top step, when the rough hand of the gen-d’arme seized me by the shoulder, while he said in a low, husky voice, “c’est inutile, Monsieur, you cannot escape—­the thing was well contrived, it is true; but the gens-d’armes of France are not easily outwitted, and you could not have long avoided detection, even in that dress.”  It was my turn to laugh now, which, to their very great amazement, I did, loud and long; that I should have thought my present costume could ever have been the means of screening me from observation, however it might have been calculated to attract it, was rather too absurd a supposition even for the mayor of a village to entertain; besides, it only now occurred to me that I was figuring in the character of a prisoner.  The continued peals of laughing which this mistake on their part elicited from me seemed to afford but slight pleasure to my captor, who gruffly said—­

“When you have done amusing yourself, mon ami, perhaps you will do us the favour to come before the mayor.”

“Certainly,” I replied; “but you will first permit me to resume my own clothes, I am quite sick of masquerading ‘en postillion.’”