oundabout, woman, who had
been pretty in her time, but whose principal characteristics for several
years had been a red and sharp nose, a shrill voice, and a determination
that the Syndic, in consideration of the authority which he exercised
when abroad, should remain under the rule of due discipline at home.

So soon as she understood the nature of the debate between her husband
and his guest, she declared roundly that the former, instead of having
occasion for more wine, had got too much already, and, far from using,
in furtherance of his request, any of the huge bunch of keys which
hung by a silver chain at her waist, she turned her back on him without
ceremony, and ushered Quentin to the neat and pleasant apartment in
which he was to spend the night, amid such appliances to rest and
comfort as probably he had till that moment been entirely a stranger
to, so much did the wealthy Flemings excel, not merely the poor and rude
Scots, but the French themselves in all the conveniences of domestic
life.

CHAPTER XXIII: THE FLIGHT

Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them.

Set on your foot;
And, with a heart new fired, I follow you,
To do I know not what.

JULIUS CAESAR

In spite of a mixture of joy and fear, doubt, anxiety, and other
agitating passions, the exhausting fatigues of the preceding day were
powerful enough to throw the young Scot into a deep and profound repose,
which lasted until late on the day following, when his worthy host
entered the apartment with looks of care on his brow.

He seated himself by his guest's bedside, and began a long and
complicated discourse upon the domestic duties of a married life, and
especially upon the awful power and right supremacy which it became
married men to sustain in all differences of opinion with their wives.
Quentin listened with some anxiety. He knew that husbands, like other
belligerent powers, were sometimes disposed to sing Te Deum [Te Deum
laudamus: We praise Thee, O God; the first words of an ancient
hymn, sung in the morning service of the Anglican and Roman Catholic
Churches], rather to conceal a defeat than to celebrate a victory, and
he hastened to probe the matter more closely, by hoping their arrival
had been attended with no inconvenience to the good lady of the
household.

"Inconvenience!--no," answered the Burgomaster.--"No woman can be
less taken unawares th