“But what say you to Ma’m’selle Duvarney coming to him that day, and again yesterday with Gabord?”
“Well, well, who knows, Bamboir? This morning I said to Nanette, ‘Why is’t, all in one moment, you send me to the devil, and pray to meet me in Abraham’s bosom too?’ What think you she answered me? Why, this, my Bamboir: ‘Why is’t Adam loved his wife and swore her down before the Lord also, all in one moment?’ Why Ma’m’selle Duvarney does this or that is not for muddy brains like ours. It is some whimsy. They say that women are more curious about the devil than about St. Jean Baptiste. Perhaps she got of him a magic book.”
“No, no! If he had the magic Petit Albert, he would have turned us into dogs long ago. But I do not like him. He is but thirty years, they say, and yet his hair is white as a pigeon’s wing. It is not natural. Nor did he ever, says Gabord, do aught but laugh at everything they did to him. The chains they put would not stay, and when he was set against the wall to be shot, the watches stopped--the minute of his shooting passed. Then M’sieu’ Doltaire came, and said a man that could do a trick like that should live to do another. And he did it, for M’sieu’ Doltaire is gone to the Bastile. Voyez, this Englishman is a damned heretic, and has the wicked arts.”
“But see, Bamboir, do you think he can cast spells?”
“So, so. But if he be a friend of the devil, La Jongleuse would not come for him, but--”
Startled and excited, they grasped each other’s arms. “But for us--for us!”
“It would be a work of God to send him to the devil,” said Bamboir in a loud whisper. “He has given us trouble enough. Who can tell what comes next? Those damned noises in his room, eh--eh?”
Then they whispered together, and presently I caught a fragment, by which I understood that, as we walked near the edge of the cliff, I should be pushed over, and they would make it appear that I had drowned myself.
They talked in low tones again, but soon got louder, and presently I knew that they were speaking of La Jongleuse; and Bamboir--the fat Bamboir, who the surgeon had said would some day die of apoplexy--was rash enough to say that he had seen her. He described her accurately, with the spirit of the born raconteur:
