; I'll take it in bed, where I'll think
over what we had better do. Come back at nine o'clock, and we'll talk
about it. Meanwhile, behave as if you had heard nothing."

Frightened at the news, Flore left Max and went to make his coffee;
but a quarter of an hour later, Baruch burst into Max's bedroom,
crying out to the grand master,--

"Fario is hunting for his barrow!"

In five minutes Max was dressed and in the street, and though he
sauntered along with apparent indifference, he soon reached the foot
of the tower embankment, where he found quite a collection of people.

"What is it?" asked Max, making his way through the crowd and reaching
the Spaniard.

Fario was a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a
blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose
and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in
Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his
movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman
Fario." But his skin--the color of gingerbread--and his softness of
manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the
half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet
roused from its phlegmatic indolence.

"Are you sure," Max said to him, after listening to his grievance,
"that you brought your cart to this place? for, thank God, there are
no thieves in Issoudun."

"I left it just there--"

"If the horse was harnessed to it, hasn't he drawn it somewhere."

"Here's the horse," said Fario, pointing to the animal, which stood
harnessed thirty feet away.

Max went gravely up to the place where the horse stood, because from
there the bottom of the tower at the top of the embankment could be
seen,--the crowd being at the foot of the mound. Everybody followed
Max, and that was what the scoundrel wanted.

"Has anybody thoughtlessly put a cart in his pocket?" cried Francois.

"Turn out your pockets, all of you!" said Baruch.

Shouts of laughter resounded on all sides. Fario swore. Oaths, with a
Spaniard, denote the highest pitch of anger.

"Was your cart light?" asked Max.

"Light!" cried Fario. "If those who laugh at me had it on their feet,
their corns would never hurt them again."

"Well, it must be devilishly light," answered Max, "for look there!"
pointing to the foot of the tower; "it has flown up the embankment."

At these words all eyes were lifted to the spot, and for a moment