‘Holloa there! what’s the matter?’ shouted a deep mellow voice from the middle of the wood; and before I could reply, a fat, rosy-cheeked man of about fifty, with a pleasant countenance terminating in a row of double chins, approached me, but still with evident caution, and halting when about five paces distant, stood still.
‘Who are you?’ said I hastily, resolving this time at least to adopt a different method of effecting my liberation.
‘What’s all this?’ quoth the fat man, shading his eyes with his palm, and addressing some one behind him, whom I now recognised as my friend the fool who visited me in the morning.
‘I say, sir,’ repeated I, in a tone of command somewhat absurd from a man in my situation, ‘who are you, may I ask?’
‘The Maire de Givet,’ said he pompously, as he drew himself up, and took a large pinch of snuff with an imposing gravity, while his companion took off his hat in the most reverent fashion, and bowed down to the ground.
‘Well, Monsieur le Maire, the better fortune mine to fall into such hands. I have been robbed, and fastened here, as you see, by a gang of scoundrels’--I took good care to say nothing of smugglers--‘who have carried away everything I possessed. Have the goodness to loosen these confounded cords, and set me at liberty.’
‘Were there many of them?’ quoth the mayor, without budging a step forward.
‘Yes, a dozen at least. But untie me at once. I’m heartily sick of being chained up here.’
‘A dozen at least!’ repeated he, in an accent of wonderment. ‘_Ma foi_, a very formidable gang. Do you remember any of their names?’
‘Devil take their names! how should I know them? Come, cut these cords, will you? We can talk just as well when I ‘m free.’
‘Not so fast, not so fast,’ said he, admonishing me with a bland motion of his hand. ‘Everything must be done in order. Now, since you don’t know their names, we must put them down as “parties unknown.”’
‘Put them down whatever you like; but let me loose!’
‘All in good time. Let us proceed regularly. Who are your witnesses?’
‘Witnesses!’ screamed I, overcome with passion; ‘you’ll drive me distracted! I tell you I was waylaid in the wood by a party of scoundrels, and you ask me for their names, and then for my witnesses! Cut these cords, and don’t be so infernally stupid! Come, old fellow, look alive, will you?’