a cook in a good family. The suburb of Rome
still continues, like Italy and Poland, to follow the Latin custom of
putting a feminine termination to the husband's name and giving it to
the wife.

By uniting their savings Pere Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy
their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump,
with the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown
eyes that were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and
intelligence, was selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her
character and her talent for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order.
Pere Cognet might be about fifty-six years old; he was thick-set, very
much under his wife's rule, and, according to a witticism which she
was fond of repeating, he only saw things with a good eye--for he was
blind of the other. In the course of seven years, that is, from 1816
to 1823, neither wife nor husband had betrayed what went on nightly at
their house, or who they were that shared in the plot; they felt the
liveliest regard for the Knights; their devotion was absolute. But
this may seem less creditable if we remember that self-interest was
the security of their affection and their silence. No matter at what
hour of the night the Knights dropped in upon the tavern, the moment
they knocked in a certain way Pere Cognet, recognizing the signal, got
up, lit the fire and the candles, opened the door, and went to the
cellar for a particular wine that was laid in expressly for the Order;
while La Cognette cooked an excellent supper, eaten either before or
after the expeditions, which were usually planned the previous evening
or in the course of the preceding day.

CHAPTER VIII

While Joseph and Madame Bridau were journeying from Orleans to
Issoudun, the Knights of Idleness perpetrated one of their best
tricks. An old Spaniard, a former prisoner of war, who after the peace
had remained in the neighborhood, where he did a small business in
grain, came early one morning to market, leaving his empty cart at the
foot of the tower of Issoudun. Maxence, who arrived at a rendezvous of
the Knights, appointed on that occasion at the foot of the tower, was
soon assailed with the whispered question, "What are we to do
to-night?"

"Here's Pere Fario's cart," he answered. "I nearly cracked my shins
over it. Let us get it up on the embankment of the tower in the first
place, and we'll make up our minds afterwards.