"Do you mean since I started this morning or since the beginning of my journey?"
"Yes, since the beginning of your journey."
"It is now two months since I departed from Paris."
"What! Cross half Gaul in such times as these, when the cursed Franks overrun the country?"
"I am an old roadster. For the last twenty years I have crossed Gaul from end to end. Is the main road hazardous, I take the by-path. Is the plain risky, I go over the mountain. Is it dangerous to travel by day, I journey by night."
"And have you not been rifled a hundred times by those thievish Franks?"
"I am an old roadster, I tell you. Accordingly, before entering Britanny, I bravely donned a priest's robe, and painted on my pack a big cross with flames red as hell-fire. The Frankish thieves are as stupid as they are savage; they fear the devil, whom the bishops frighten them with in order to share with them the spoils of Gaul. They would not dare to attack me, taking me for a priest."
"Come, supper is ready--to table," said old Araim; and addressing his son's wife, who continued to give signs of preoccupation, he said to her in a low voice:
"What is the matter, Madalen? Are you still thinking of the Korrigans?"
"This stranger who disguises himself in the robe of a priest without being one will bring misfortune over our house. The tempest's fury seems to have redoubled since he came in."
It is an impossible thing to allay a mother's apprehensions once they are aroused.
The family and the guest sat down to table, ate and drank. The peddler drank and ate like a man to whom the road imparts a good appetite. The jaws did their ample duty; teeth and tongues played their parts well; the family was in good spirits. It is not every long winter's night that one has a peddler from Paris in his company.
"And what is going on in Paris, brave roadster?"
"The most satisfactory thing that I have seen in the city was the burying of the King of the cursed Franks!"
"He died more than two months ago--on the 25th of November of last year, of the year 512 of the 'Incarnation of the Word,' as the bishops say who blessed and gave sepulchre to the crowned murderer in the basilica of the Holy Apostles at Paris."
"Ah! He is dead, that Frankish King! And what was his name?"