[Illustration: "THE INNKEEPER SERVED HIM IN PERSON."]
He carried with him a small and curiously wrought iron box, of which he seemed excessively careful, keeping it close beside him, and every now and then touching it with his hand, as though to make sure that it had not been spirited away.
The innkeeper, a merry little pot-bellied rogue, as round as a dumpling and as red as an apple, served him in person, talking garrulously the while. Monsieur was on his way to Flourens? Ah! there was great excitement there to-day. What! Monsieur did not know? He must then be a stranger not to know that Monseigneur the Marquis had left Paris, and was coming back to the château to live.
Oliver was interested. He had seen monseigneur in Flourens once some two or three years before, when he had paid a flying visit to the château to put on another turn of the screw, and to squeeze all the money he could from the starving peasants of the estate, to pay some of his more hungry and clamorous creditors. All Flourens had known that the marquis was over head and ears in debt, and now the little gossiping landlord added the supplement. It was, he told Oliver, through no choice that Monseigneur the Marquis was to come back to the country again, but because he had no more wherewith to support his Paris life. He loathed Flourens, and he loved Paris; he hated the dull life of the country, and he adored the gayety of the city, its powder, its patches, its masques, its court, its vanity, its show, and, most of all, its intrigues and its cards. But all these cost money, for Monseigneur the Marquis had lived like a prince of the blood, and it had cost a deal. Ah, yes! such little matters as intrigues and the cards cost treasures of money in Paris, he had heard say. So now the marquis and the family were coming back again to Flourens.
By the time that the landlord had half done his gossip, Oliver had finished his bread and wine; then, the horses being refreshed, he bade the servant whom he had brought down from Paris with him to order out the calash. The landlord would have assisted Oliver in carrying his iron box, but Oliver would not permit it. He commanded him somewhat sharply to let it alone, and he himself stowed it safely within the calash.