'You have not got my signature, I tell you,' cried the Commissary. 'Show me my signature! Where is my signature?'
That was just the question; where was his signature? Leon recognised that he was in a hole; but his spirit rose with the occasion, and he blustered nobly, tossing back his curls. The Commissary played up to him in the character of tyrant; and as the one leaned farther forward, the other leaned farther back - majesty confronting fury. The audience had transferred their attention to this new performance, and listened with that silent gravity common to all Frenchmen in the neighbourhood of the Police. Elvira had sat down, she was used to these distractions, and it was rather melancholy than fear that now oppressed her.
'Another word,' cried the Commissary, 'and I arrest you.'
'Arrest me?' shouted Leon. 'I defy you!'
'I am the Commissary of Police,' said the official.
Leon commanded his feelings, and replied, with great delicacy of innuendo -
'So it would appear.'
The point was too refined for Castel-le-Gachis; it did not raise a smile; and as for the Commissary, he simply bade the singer follow him to his office, and directed his proud footsteps towards the door. There was nothing for it but to obey. Leon did so with a proper pantomime of indifference, but it was a leek to eat, and there was no denying it.
The Maire had slipped out and was already waiting at the Commissary's door. Now the Maire, in France, is the refuge of the oppressed. He stands between his people and the boisterous rigours of the Police. He can sometimes understand what is said to him; he is not always puffed up beyond measure by his dignity. 'Tis a thing worth the knowledge of travellers. When all seems over, and a man has made up his mind to injustice, he has still, like the heroes of romance, a little bugle at his belt whereon to blow; and the Maire, a comfortable DEUS EX MACHINA, may still descend to deliver him from the minions of the law. The Maire of Castel-le- Gachis, although inaccessible to the charms of music as retailed by the Berthelinis, had no hesitation whatever as to the rights of the matter. He instantly fell foul of the Commissary in very high terms, and the Commissary, pricked by this humiliation, accepted battle on the point of fact. The argument lasted some little while with varying success, until at length victory inclined so plainly to the Commissary's side that the Maire was fain to reassert himself by an exercise of authority. He had been out-argued, but he was still the Maire. And so, turning from his interlocutor, he briefly but kindly recommended Leon to get back instanter to his concert.
'It is already growing late,' he added.
Leon did not wait to be told twice. He returned to the Cafe of the Triumphs of the Plough with all expedition. Alas! the audience had melted away during his absence; Elvira was sitting in a very disconsolate attitude on the guitar-box; she had watched the company dispersing by twos and threes, and the prolonged spectacle had somewhat overwhelmed her spirits. Each man, she reflected, retired with a certain proportion of her earnings in his pocket, and she saw to-night's board and to-morrow's railway expenses, and finally even to-morrow's dinner, walk one after another out of the cafe door and disappear into the night.
'What was it?' she asked languidly. But Leon did not answer. He was looking round him on the scene of defeat. Scarce a score of listeners remained, and these of the least promising sort. The minute hand of the clock was already climbing upward towards eleven.
'It's a lost battle,' said he, and then taking up the money-box he turned it out. 'Three francs seventy-five!' he cried, 'as against four of board and six of railway fares; and no time for the tombola! Elvira, this is Waterloo.' And he sat down and passed both hands desperately among his curls. 'O Fichu Commissaire!' he cried, 'Fichu Commissaire!'
'Let us get the things together and be off,' returned Elvira. 'We might try another song, but there is not six halfpence in the room.'
'Six halfpence?' cried Leon, 'six hundred thousand devils! There is not a human creature in the town - nothing but pigs and dogs and commissaires! Pray heaven, we get safe to bed.'
'Don't imagine things!' exclaimed Elvira, with a shudder.
And with that they set to work on their preparations. The tobacco- jar, the cigarette-holder, the three papers of shirt-studs, which were to have been the prices of the tombola had the tombola come off, were made into a bundle with the music; the guitar was stowed into the fat guitar-case; and Elvira having thrown a thin shawl about her neck and shoulders, the pair issued from the cafe and set off for the Black Head.
As they crossed the market-place the church bell rang out eleven. It was a dark, mild night, and there was no one in the streets.
'It is all very fine,' said Leon; 'but I have a presentiment. The night is not yet done.'
CHAPTER III
The 'Black Head' presented not a single chink of light upon the street, and the carriage gate was closed.
'This is unprecedented,' observed Leon. 'An inn closed by five minutes after eleven! And there were several commercial travellers in the cafe up to a late hour. Elvira, my heart misgives me. Let us ring the bell.'
The bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled the house from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. The sound accentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintry sentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon Elvira's mind; and, as for Leon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions for a lugubrious fifth act.
'This is your fault,' said Elvira: 'this is what comes of fancying things!'
Again Leon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous with wrath.
'What's all this?' cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate. 'Hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like Prussians at the door of a respectable hotel? Oh!' he cried, 'I know you now! Common singers! People in trouble with the police! And you present yourselves at midnight like lords and ladies? Be off with you!'
'You will permit me to remind you,' replied Leon, in thrilling tones, 'that I am a guest in your house, that I am properly inscribed, and that I have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs.'
'You cannot get in at this hour,' returned the man. 'This is no thieves' tavern, for mohocks and night rakes and organ-grinders.'
'Brute!' cried Elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home.
'Then I demand my baggage,' said Leon, with unabated dignity.
'I know nothing of your baggage,' replied the landlord.
'You detain my baggage? You dare to detain my baggage?' cried the singer.
'Who are you?' returned the landlord. 'It is dark - I cannot recognise you.'
'Very well, then - you detain my baggage,' concluded Leon. 'You shall smart for this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word - I will put you in a song - a scurrilous song - an indecent song - a popular song - which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these spars at mid- night!'
He had gone on raising his voice at every phrase, for all the while the landlord was very placidly retiring; and now, when the last glimmer of light had vanished from the arch, and the last footstep died away in the interior, Leon turned to his wife with a heroic countenance.
'Elvira,' said he, 'I have now a duty in life. I shall destroy that man as Eugene Sue destroyed the concierge. Let us come at once to the Gendarmerie and begin our vengeance.'
He picked up the guitar-case, which had been propped against the wall, and they set forth through the silent and ill-lighted town with burning hearts.
The Gendarmerie was concealed beside the telegraph office at the bottom of a vast court, which was partly laid out in gardens; and here all the shepherds of the public lay locked in grateful sleep. It took a deal of knocking to
